Authors: Louise Marley

The Brahms Deception (6 page)

BOOK: The Brahms Deception

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“Cosa?”

“
P dolce
. It's an obscure marking he used in his A-Major Quartet. Julliard liked that as a doctoral thesis.”

“But they didn't like Clara Schumann.”

“No. My adviser said Clara Schumann was not a feminist. I didn't agree, but in academia, sometimes we have to make compromises.”

“This I know very well indeed.”

“I'll bet you do.”

“So you changed to Brahms. Not far removed from Clara Schumann, I think.”

“That's true.”

“And then you applied to do remote research.”

“I'm pretty sure everyone did.”

She shook her head, and a strand of hair fell in front of her eyes. She lifted it out of the way, and tucked it somewhere into the chaos. “I do not think so,” she said firmly. “I think many people are afraid.”

“There's nothing to be afraid of.”

She cast him another sidelong glance. “Kristian. They have lost Miss Bannister. Perhaps you should be afraid.”

He grinned at her. “Well, I'm not.”
Nothing left to lose.

She blew a raspberry. “As I said before. Young and foolish!”

“Young! I'm as old as you are, at least.”

“No, no. I am Italian. I was born old.”

She turned into an even narrower lane, and the Fiat bumped over cracked concrete and scattered stones as they approached the crest of the hill. In the subdued moonlight, Kristian could just make out the twelve houses of Castagno jumbled together, the larger, newer buildings scattered beyond them. It looked as quaint as its photographs. Perched on a hill in western Tuscany, Castagno was a fragment of a world long gone, a world erased by tourists and time. Castagno persevered, even now, but it must have been exquisite in 1861.

What a relief it must have been to Brahms to escape the bustle of Hamburg, to take refuge on this unspoiled hilltop, but how strange that he had come so far, to a place where he didn't speak the language, where he knew no one, where he would be isolated for two weeks. It must have felt necessary to him. To his music. And perhaps he had been right to do it. It was here, evidently, that Brahms had conceived that enigmatic marking,
p dolce
. Kristian hoped he could prove it.

As they drove over the crest of the hill, Chiara slowed and pointed to her left. “Casa Agosto is down there,” she said. “But it's hard to see in the darkness.”

“Is it empty now?”

“No. There is a family there.”

“Do they know?”

She shook her head. “There is no need to tell them.”

There could be no mistake which of the buildings was now the temporary clinic of the Remote Research Foundation. Alone of all the houses, it was awake and alive at this strange hour. Lights blazed from its windows, and vehicles were parked in its gravel drive, a Volvo, a small Mercedes, a Vespa. The building was long and plain, two stories, with a generator bulking against an outside wall. A security guard, wearing a jacket with the name of his company on the pocket, lounged on the doorstep between two straight pillars. He straightened as the Fiat crunched over the gravel to swerve into a parking space, then relaxed when Chiara turned off the motor and opened her door so the interior light shone on her. He waved to her, and she waved back.

“It is a small staff,” she said. “Only the guards, Max, Elliott, and me.”

Kristian unfolded his long legs from the little car and stepped out into the night breeze. He was beginning to feel shaky with fatigue. He rubbed his face with his palms and breathed the clean, cold air, trying to clear the fog from his brain. Chiara was bending into the backseat to pick up a cardboard box. When he realized it, he hurried to help her.

“No, no,” she said. “Just take your bag. This weighs nothing.”

Together they walked across the parking lot and up the sidewalk. The guard opened the door for them to go through, saying, “
Buona sera, dottoressa
.”

“Buona sera.”
She introduced Kristian in Italian, and he nodded a greeting. She led the way into a wide hallway with a cold linoleum floor. A mural in muted greens and corals filled one wall. There was a leather couch and matching armchair to one side, and a tall, rather droopy houseplant behind them, but no other decoration. The place looked as if it had been rented unfurnished and no one had bothered with extras. Kristian wondered who had left the plant behind.

Chiara set down the box she was carrying, and beckoned to Kristian. “Leave your bag,” she said. “Someone will put it in your room.”

Obediently, Kristian dropped his duffel where he stood, and followed her down the corridor. There were several doors, all standing open, all, as far as he could tell, giving onto empty rooms. She walked to the only one that was closed, and opened it quietly, motioning for him to come in after her.

This room, the heart of the transfer clinic, was as full as the other rooms were bare. It was long and narrow and dim. To one side, amber and white lights blinked on a wall of instruments. Another wall held tubes and tanks and a rolling cabinet full of medical equipment. Three tall windows were blank, white shutters tightly closed. An old, rather elegant mahogany desk sat at the far end of the room, looking anachronistic among the metal and plastic and glass equipment. Several metal folding chairs were scattered around the desk, and a single well-shaded floor lamp glowed behind it. A technician rose from behind the desk, and started down the room to meet them.

Kristian absorbed all of this with a swift glance, then turned his full attention to the transfer cot. He took a step toward it, struck by her stillness and what it meant.

She lay motionless, as if in a deep, restful sleep. Her eyes were closed, the lids still. Her lips were a little open. She looked as if she were at peace, despite the tubes and wires bristling all around her.

Kristian crossed the room with quiet steps to take his first close look at Frederica Bannister.

He had seen one photo of her. He had retrieved it from the Internet after the crushing telephone call from Gregson, and before he started avoiding news about the Remote Research Foundation. The picture had been a formal, touched-up sort of portrait, showing her at the piano in her parents' apartment on Lake Shore Drive. He had known from that picture that Frederica was not a pretty girl, but seeing her now, in the flesh, he found himself surprised by a feeling of disappointment.

Her thin brown hair hung in limp strands from beneath the transfer cap. It had no more body or life than the wires that fell over her shoulders, or the catheter connected to a plastic bag beneath the cot frame. What he could see of her forehead beneath the cap was rather lumpy. Her nose was narrow and too long, her lips thin. She had narrow shoulders, and almost no bosom. Frederica Bannister, his competitor, the lucky girl who had won the chance to observe Brahms, had no beauty at all. He felt a stab of sympathy for her.

Chiara came up beside him. She scanned the monitors, and he noticed that though the girl's blood pressure was being tracked on a screen, Chiara put her fingers on Frederica's wrist, as if she trusted her own touch more than she did the electronic measurement.

When she released it, she glanced up at Kristian. “You see. She has been this way since Thursday morning. She should have awakened at four o'clock Thursday afternoon.”

“What day is it now?”

She glanced at a wall clock as she began gathering her hair with her hands, stabbing combs into it here and there. “
Domenica mattina.
It is Sunday morning.”

He followed her gaze. The clock read five. He didn't dare think how little sleep he had had in the last two days. The technician turned out to be a compact man with thinning hair and deep vertical lines in his cheeks. The lines gave him a mournful appearance, a bit like a basset hound. He appeared on Chiara's other side and looked at Kristian above her head. “We gave her the warning, then reversed the transfer right on schedule. She just didn't come back. Didn't wake up.”

“There's never been anything like this in any of the other transfers?” Kristian asked.

“No. And I've worked on all of them.” The man stepped around Chiara and held out his hand. “Elliott Bailey.”

Kristian shook his hand. “Kristian North.”

“Dr. Gregson tells us you're going after her.”

“I'm going to try.”

“You know how the transfer works?”

Kristian looked back at poor, plain Frederica Bannister, lying so still among her wires and tubes.
The lost girl.
“Yes, of course,” he said.

“I'll wake Max,” Elliott said. “He's our PA.”

“Now?” Kristian raised his eyebrows.

“If you feel up to it.”

“Iâwell, sure.”

“Dr. Braunstein hopes this will all be resolved by tomorrow, U.S. time. Before Frederica's parents go to the press.”

“Where are her parents?”

“In Chicago, at their home. Very unhappy, we hear.”

“I can imagine. Well, then. I guess I'm ready.”

Chiara frowned. “You are sure you're not too tired?”

He grinned. “I can rest on the cot, right?”

She turned away, shaking her head, but she didn't say anything more.

It was a good thing, Kristian thought, that his mind had been already made up. Things moved swiftly. Max, a lanky, freckled young man, came in yawning and rubbing his brush of reddish hair. Elliott rolled in an extra cot, with its own set of wires and tubes and cap. Chiara pointed Kristian to a bathroom in the corridor. He scowled at himself in the mirror over the sink, and did his best to comb his hair with his fingers. He drank a cup of water while he was in there, and washed his hands. The rest, he told himself, would have to wait till he came back.

He went back into the transfer room, and put himself into Chiara's hands. She helped him lie back on the cot, adjusting the thin pillow beneath his neck. She inserted an IV and attached a blood pressure cuff, patching everything into the bank of monitors.

“Your blood pressure is a little high,” she said. “Are you nervous?”

“Nope.”

“Ah.
Bene
.”

Max and Elliott both bent over him, snaking wires over his shoulders, settling the cap on his head. It was cool and a little prickly, the sensors finding their way through his hair and onto his skin. Elliott said, “I've been working on the coordinates since you agreed to come, and Chicago sent me your file. Everything's set.”

“What time will it be?”

“We thought nine in the morning would be good. It's the day after Frederica was transferred, because of our concern about the layering effect. You need to keep your distance from her. You understand that?”

“Yes. I'll be careful.”

“And it's spring there. May.”

“I know.”

Max said, “Hey, you might get lucky, and observe some of the locals.” He clapped Kristian's shoulder with the air of someone wishing a friend
bon voyage
.

Elliott said, “You should be able to perceive Frederica. We're not sure how it worksâ”

“Like most things about the transfer process,” Max said cheerfully.

Elliott scowled at him. “âbut we sent two researchers to Magna Carta, and they could observe each other clearly.”

Kristian said, “Yes. I read their reports.”

“You'll observe her if she's there, that is,” Max said.

Elliott's voice shook. “She has to be there!” The lines in his cheeks deepened. “Where else could she be?”

“I don't know,” Max said, shrugging. “You programmed the transfer.”

Elliott's mouth trembled. “I've checked it a hundred times, Max. You know that. You watched me. It was all correct.”

Max gripped Elliott's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Yeah, I know, I know. I was just kidding. Relax, man.”

Plaintively, Elliott said, “How can I relax? Look at her!”

Chiara put in, “Elliott, you are doing all you can. Come, sit down next to Kristian.”

Max glanced at the readouts above Kristian's head. “Are you ready, Kris?”

He answered quickly, decisively, “Yup,” despite the sudden and surprising doubt that swept over him. What was he doing? Where was he going? If Frederica could disappear, could he, despite his bravado in front of Erika? And if he did, who would take care of her?

“One hour,” Elliott said. “No more.”

He forced himself to focus on Elliott's face. “Right.”

BOOK: The Brahms Deception

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