The Hypnotist (11 page)

When he opened his eyes he was speaking the same three
words over and over, and despite her instructions there was pain woven into them—deep and long-lasting pain.

“Iantha, I’m sorry. Iantha, I’m sorry. Iantha, I’m sorry.”

Even though Samimi had only been called into his boss’s office to go over plans for his afternoon appointment at the Met, he was anxious. Since he had learned about the Semtex shipment, everything made him anxious.

“Is the meeting set, Ali?”

“All set. I confirmed an hour ago.”

Taghinia smiled as he opened his humidor, extracted a Cuban, rolled it in his fingers, listened to its music, cut off the tip and set about lighting the stinking weed.

Samimi, who was sitting opposite him on the couch, wished he could get out of the office before the stench infiltrated his clothes. He hated his boss’s indulgence but was doing his best to keep his revulsion in check, along with his nerves.

“Your mission today is very important,” Taghinia said.

“So you’ve said.”

“Be careful, be vigilant.” Taghinia inhaled, held the smoke and then blew it out, not caring that it wafted right toward his underling.

Standing, Samimi walked over to the window.

“This is a critical part of our planning,” Taghinia continued
with a slight edge of aggravation in his voice that Samimi knew he’d provoked by getting up. His boss didn’t approve of his employee’s disapproval.

“Yes, you’ve said that before, but it’s difficult for me to do my job as well as possible without knowing the details of our plans,” Samimi said. “What exactly does Deborah Mitchell have to do with us getting the sculpture back?”

“You know as much as you need to right now.” Taghinia took another long pull on the cigar and then let the smoke out achingly slowly.

“I know nothing. If I just understood—”

Taghinia cut him off. “All right, all right.” And then, as if he were trying to teach a poor student a basic equation, he continued on in an exasperated voice. “We will need access to an event at the museum over the next few weeks. Deborah Mitchell will afford us that access. Bringing her yet one more little treasure will ensure it. Your job is to make her understand how much you enjoy spending time at the museum and how happy it would make you to be invited to their events, parties and openings. When you need to know more than that, I’ll inform you.”

Samimi nodded impatiently, as was expected of someone frustrated to be left out of the loop.

“My only fear,” Taghinia said, “is that this next step depends on you being charming, and that’s not something you excel at.”

Samimi was used to his boss’s passive-aggressive swipes, but cringed anyway—all part of the act. He was doing what was expected of him, behaving as he’d always behaved, being the same man he’d been for the past three years. Except he wasn’t that sorry little man anymore. He had taken control of his own destiny. He was going to shape his future, not let this slob shape it for him.

“Here you are.” Taghinia handed Samimi a package. “It arrived via the diplomatic pouch yesterday, and the associate director of the museum in Tehran is standing by on the phone waiting to talk to you about it.”

The container was the size and shape of a shoe box and covered in brown leather that was soft to Samimi’s touch. Opening the double brass hinge, he found a silk pouch that contained an antique cup made of gold. With one glance, he knew it was both very beautiful and very rare.

“I expect it will be more than impressive and certainly will make up for your deficiencies,” Taghinia said.

Samimi winced at the barb as he replaced the object, put the box under his arm and rose.

“One more thing.”

Samimi was halfway to the door.

“Yes?”

“Tomorrow, I’d like you to go straight to the warehouse in the morning instead of coming here.”

“The warehouse?” Samimi’s heart was beating so hard he wondered if his boss could see it.

“We’re expecting a delivery. I want you to pay for it.”

“What kind of delivery?”

“It’s not necessary for you to know.”

Samimi frowned. “I think it is, Farid.”

“It’s not your job to think about whether my decisions are right or wrong. When you need to know, you’ll know.” He spat out the words as if they were little pieces of tobacco stuck on his tongue.

“What do you want me to do with this delivery?”

“Wait until the courier has left, then call me. I’ll give you instructions.”

So the Semtex had arrived in the same pouch as the artifact. Samimi shivered as he walked out of Taghinia’s office.

The skinny woman who greeted Samimi had short blond hair and oversize square black glasses. As she gave him a visitor’s badge, Laura Freedman introduced herself and then asked him to follow her. Leading him through the museum’s grand lobby with its soaring ceiling and enormous bouquets of apple blossom branches in niches carved out of the stone walls, she was quiet. She remained so as they walked through the medieval wing, made a left, went through a few galleries of European furnishings and stopped at an elevator bank near the twentieth-century modern art exhibition space.

Samimi was too worried to give the treasures they passed their due. Why was he meeting with Laura instead of the curator?

Exiting the elevator on the fourth floor, they passed by a receptionist at an ornate desk, walked down a richly carpeted hallway and stopped at the first office on the right. The door was open.

“Thanks, Laura,” Deborah Mitchell said as she got up and came around from behind her desk to greet Samimi.

Today she was wearing a long-sleeved ruby dress that set off her dark coloring and chestnut eyes. Her long ebony hair was woven into a braid, and as he shook her hand, Samimi couldn’t help imagining that hair loose and spread out on a pillow. His thought must have somehow translated to her because she blushed. Which made him smile. Which just made her blush deepen. Wouldn’t Taghinia be surprised?

“Welcome back to the museum,” she said.

He thanked her as he put the shopping bag on her desk.

She looked at it and then back at him. “Would you like some coffee? We have cappuccino—or tea, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, tea.” He smiled.

“And sugar, right?”

“Yes, please.”

There was something pleasantly old-fashioned about the ritual, especially when Deborah went to get it herself. He’d expected her to have her assistant bring the tea.

Sitting in on the visitor’s side of her clean modern desk with its computer and assortment of papers, catalogues, pens and photographs, Samimi noticed the poster on the wall. It was different from the one that had been hanging there the last time he’d visited. This was a green, cobalt and turquoise tile blown up to bleed off the edges of the paper with silver type outlined in black that read, EARLY PERSIAN TILEWORK, THE MEDIEVAL FLOWERING OF KASHI and, beneath that, the dates of the exhibition that had opened in January and would run through June.

“Here you are,” she said, returning with two navy mugs that had the MMA insignia on them.

He sipped the steaming beverage. “Too many people make tea that isn’t hot enough, but this is perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

Deborah nodded at the unadorned shopping bag and said, “You’ve certainly aroused my curiosity with your call, Mr. Samimi. After the last treasure you brought us, I can’t wait to see this one.”

“Please call me Ali,” he said. Reaching inside, he pulled out the leather box, put it on the desk and made a show of opening it to reveal the blue silk pouch embroidered with white flowers with green leaves. Withdrawing it, he offered it to her.

She nodded, almost shyly, which Samimi had found fascinating the last time he’d met her, too. Here was a well-respected art historian working at one of the world’s finest museums, but she was still reserved. If he were to ever marry, he’d probably look for a wife more like Deborah than the women he’d been sleeping with—a wife with both feet planted firmly in America but who still sometimes dreamt about the ancient desert.

“The man who owns this would very much like to offer it to the museum if you think it worthy of your collection.”

Deborah loosened the tie, reached inside and pulled out an egg-shaped golden cup decorated with the heads of two men, each wearing a crown of leaves. Turning it slowly, she examined it.

“What do you make of it?” He couldn’t be certain but he thought she was impressed.

“It’s exquisite,” she whispered.

“One similar to this, also beaten out of a single sheet of gold, sold in London for over a million dollars last year.”

“I know,” she said, but something in her voice intimated that an object’s value wasn’t just what it sold for.

Using a jeweler’s loupe, she examined the cup more closely. “It’s Achaemenid gold, I think. Everything about the goldsmithing suggests it. Third or fourth century BCE.”

What she said was consistent with what Samimi had been told about the cup from the curator of the Tehran museum.

“The workmanship is extraordinary,” she offered finally, still staring at the vessel, unable to look away from it. “Does your client—”

“Not a client. The mission is simply helping one of our citizens.”

“And he’s offering this to us?”

“He’s an Iranian American who wants to do his part to help forge a stronger bond between the country of his birth and the country of his children’s birth.”

She nodded, understanding the sentiment as he’d hoped she would. Farid Taghinia might have come up with the plan, but this explanation was his contribution and he was proud it had worked.

“What’s his name?”

“He wants to remain anonymous for now. Will that present a problem?”

“As long as you can show us papers proving he owns the cup outright and there’s no controversy surrounding its provenance.”

“I can assure you there isn’t. We’re all aware of how careful you have to be these days. The last thing we’d want to do is add to the conflict your museum and our government are already engaged in. Messy business.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “Unofficially, I’m embarrassed by how aggressive we are being. A lot of us are. My friend who owns the cup is.” Samimi hadn’t planned those last few sentences but she’d given him the perfect opening and he wanted to plant the idea that he sympathized with her museum.

She seemed about to say something and then held back.

“The only thing the donor of the cup insists on is that it be displayed. He doesn’t want it going into storage. Also, if you do decide to take it, he will go public with who he is. It’s important to him that people know of his gesture toward peace.”

“It’s way too early to give you any promises. First we need to examine the cup, determine its authenticity and clear its history—but I understand the conditions. If we accept this generous offer, we’ll certainly put it on display.”

Samimi nodded. “How long will the process take?”

“Depending on the paperwork you can provide, the earliest would be four or five weeks. Will that be all right?”

“Yes, fine.” According to what he’d heard on the tapes and what Taghinia had told him, those few weeks were what this charade was all about.

“I just need to prepare a receipt.” Deborah pushed some clutter out of the way and placed the cup in the center of her desk. “I’ll get a few shots to make sure we cover its condition…” She stopped speaking while she photographed the artifact from different angles, including the inside and under
side. “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll print these out and you can initial them. We’ll each have a copy, and you’ll have a receipt.”

“Not at all.” He looked right at her and held her gaze. He hoped he wasn’t moving too fast, but he had a feeling—and he was usually right when it came to women—that she didn’t get enough attention and she’d preen.

And she did, offering him another shy smile.

While she printed out the photos, Samimi drank more of his tea, even though it was lukewarm now, and inspected the poster again. The glorious green, cobalt and turquoise tile was so indicative of the art of his homeland it made him homesick for a moment—not for the political landscape but for the country of his great-grandparents that he had seen remnants of and heard stories about, and that was lost now, probably forever.

“Here you go, Mr. Samimi.” She handed him a stack of photos, a release form and a pen.

“Ali,” he said. As he scrawled his initials on each shot, he breathed in air that was slightly perfumed by the scent she wore. Clean and floral, very pleasant. Handing her back the pen, he looked into her warm brown eyes. “Would it be appropriate,” he asked formally, guessing by her demeanor that this would be the right approach, “if I called and invited you to dinner one night to celebrate?”

Lucian finished reading about Vartan Reza’s hit-and-run accident, looked up from his computer screen and stared out of his window at his sliver of a view. The Art Crime Team offices were crammed into FBI headquarters downtown at 26 Federal Plaza. Between the two buildings across the street, he could see a small park with its curving wood benches, exaggerated lights and glass mounds emitting fog plumes. It was an amusement in the midst of the serious courthouses, government agencies, financial buildings and the destroyed World Trade Towers.

He stood and carried his mug of coffee over to the cork wall facing his desk, where there was a patchwork map of his current case. He always organized it the same way. Dead center was a single photo that was key to the core puzzle: the missing or stolen work of art. Overlapping and radiating out from there were photos, sketches and notes about the locations, players and props that related to the crime.

For more than a year this wall had been devoted to the memory stone theft in Rome and so included photos of Malachai Samuels, the Phoenix Foundation, the stones themselves,
where they’d been found and hundreds of other related illustrations, diagrams and images. Recently items associated with the theft in the Memorist Society in Vienna had been added to what others saw as an unorganized mess, but which Lucian had carefully arranged.

In the past thirty-six hours, as he’d amassed a dossier on the sculpture at the heart of his newest case, another section of his wall was filling up with photos of Hypnos and the hostage paintings. Bits and pieces of all three crimes arbitrarily overlapped. Now, noticing it, Lucian wondered whether Malachai’s name would surface in the Hypnos crisis.

“How long have you been here?” Doug Comley stood in the door, holding a cardboard cup in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

“A few hours.”

“Still can’t sleep? You okay?”

“Never better. Listen, there’s something curious about the legal battle over the sculpture,” Lucian said. He explained what he’d discovered about the law firm that had been hired to replace Reza. “It’s owned by Tyler Weil’s father.”

“The Met’s director’s father is handling the Iranians’ lawsuit? That sounds like a pretty serious conflict of interest. What do you know about the accident?”

“It was early, raining, the park was empty, and there were no witnesses. The NYPD is investigating but have no leads.”

“I want you to follow through on this.”

“No problem,” Lucian said, and then put his hand up to his temple and massaged his forehead. He’d woken up with a headache that had lifted while he’d been drawing. This was the first sign of its return.

“You all right?” Comley asked.

“Like I said, never better.”

“You’re sure you’re not pushing yourself working on both of these cases? Why don’t you let Richmond—”

“Are you ordering me off?” Lucian asked, jumping six steps ahead.

Comley threw up his hands. “Ordering you? No. Suggesting. If I ordered you off the memory flute case and you kept working on it, then I’d have to fire you, and I don’t have the budget to hire a replacement.”

“I can handle it.”

“Malachai Samuels is tricky, even for us, Lucian. He proved that last year when—”

Comley was interrupted by the receptionist ringing through on the intercom.

“Agent Glass. Someone’s here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment.”

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Emeline Jacobs.”

She was sitting in one of the blue leatherette chairs, staring straight ahead at a poster of a black-and-white WPA-era photo of New York City’s skyline taken by Stieglitz.

“Miss Jacobs?”

She turned, saw Lucian and stood up. Her hair was as gold and her skin as pale as he remembered. Her clothes were monochromatic: cream pants, a cream silk round-necked blouse and a cream sweater tied around her shoulders. No rings, no bracelets, not even a watch. Just a thin gold chain around her neck that bore a tiny gold paintbrush charm with a red tip.

Lucian tried not to stare but failed as a memory rushed him like a hurricane-force wind.

One cold February day, two weeks before Solange’s birthday, he’d walked from his dorm uptown to Forty-Seventh Street and
Fifth Avenue to New York’s famed Diamond District, where hundreds of individual jewelers rented booths in the arcade buildings that lined the street. For over an hour, he had scanned their offerings, searching for something to give her that he thought she’d like and that he could afford. Everything was either too expensive or too impersonal. And then, in the fourth building, in the back, where there was less noise and foot traffic and the displays were more pedestrian, he passed a case of hundreds of tiny charms, all exquisitely made, and that was where he’d bought the one now hanging around Emeline Jacobs’s neck.

He gestured toward his office. Inside, he invited her to sit. “How can I help you?” She didn’t answer right away. The way she held his glance felt familiar somehow, an odd combination of curiosity and innocence. Was he wrong or had Solange always paused just so, regarding him almost exactly this way before she spoke? It was the artist in her observing her surroundings. The raw, involuntary sadness he suddenly felt after so long surprised him.

“My father’s been very upset since your visit,” Emeline said finally. Her soft but raspy voice was a relief and broke through his crazy, meandering thoughts.

“I’m sorry about that…”

“If you still need him to, he’ll look at the painting.”

It would save Lucian hours of work if Jacobs could identify the mark on the back of the Matisse. “That would be an enormous help.”

“He’s not doing it to help you. He needs to know if it’s the same painting for his own peace of mind…” She hesitated and shook her head as if she were still having an argument with someone who wasn’t there. “I don’t believe in closure. Therapists don’t show any respect for their patients when they suggest
there can be an end to missing someone. Seeing this painting could threaten the little emotional stability he has left. He dwells in hell, Agent Glass. I see it in his eyes every time I look at him.”

Emeline’s voice communicated pathos and pain and was rife with emotion, but she didn’t twist her hands in her lap or exhibit any of the signs of distress that Lucian would expect to see in someone talking about such a difficult situation. He didn’t doubt that she was telling him the truth, but she was exhibiting amazing self-control.

“‘Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell,’” he said, surprised that the quote had come back to him.

“Emily Dickinson,” Emeline said. “I have a book of poetry with that poem in it. The page corner is turned down.”

Lucian didn’t need to ask whose book it was. Emeline must have all of Solange’s books. And what else? Her drawings? Journals? Were there letters from him that she’d found? Had she inherited all the remnants of Solange’s life? How much had she learned about him?

“We’ll do what we can to make it as painless as possible for your father.”

Her laugh was too bitter for someone so young, full of the disappointments of someone who’d lived much longer and suffered much more. Lucian had such a strong, sudden sense of being with Solange that he was swept under, submerged in murky confusion.

Was this a hallucination, a reaction to whatever he’d been exposed to in Vienna? Or did this have to do with his headaches? He wanted to break Emeline Jacobs open and see if the other woman was inside her, to find out where Solange was hiding.

“There’s nothing you can do to make it less painful. He’s never had a single day of real joy or happiness since…” She broke off, took a deep breath, then continued. “He just has days
that are slightly less awful than others. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to see your father like that, for your whole life? To try to do everything you can to make it better? Make him really smile? My father’s never recovered.” She clasped her hands together.

She’s closing up,
Lucian thought. And then, as if completing the act, Emeline crossed her legs. Bare legs, he noticed. He glanced back at her face, but her eyes revealed nothing. They were a stranger’s eyes. Whatever he’d seen there before must have been in his imagination.

“I’m curious about something. When I knew Solange twenty years ago she was an only child. I didn’t know she had a sister.”

“When I was eight years old my mother, my father, my brother and I were in a car accident. They were all killed. It was touch and go for me…I don’t remember anything about it…but I was in a coma for six weeks. My aunt and uncle, Solange’s parents, were there every day. She’d died five months before and they were still grieving, but I was all that was left of their family. When I recovered they adopted me. I don’t think they wanted to at first, but once they decided to, I think they hoped I’d fill up some of the space that she’d left.”

“Did you?”

“I only made it worse. I was a constant reminder to them of what they’d lost. My aunt never really recovered, and when I went off to college she finally gave in to her depression and committed suicide. Andre has been drinking himself into a state of numbness every day since then. He blames himself for all of it—for leaving Solange in the store the night it was robbed, for trusting his assistant to lock up, for not being able to save his wife from her sorrow.” She shrugged as if the burden of the story she’d just shared had settled on her shoulders and was too heavy.

“I’m sorry,” he offered compassionately. “They’re inadequate words, I know, but there
are
no adequate words, are there?”

“Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone we are not alone in traveling it.” Emeline said the words as if she’d said them many times before. Was this what she’d learned from her adopted father or mother?

Whatever pleasure Lucian had in life came from solving mysteries. When there was something he didn’t understand he forced himself to keep looking until he found a solid, logical and comprehensible solution. But he knew there was no explanation for what was happening—one minute she was a stranger; the next he felt as if he’d always known her. He had to get back to working the case. To getting out of his head.

“Could you and your father come and see the painting at the Met this afternoon?”

“I think it would be better if you could bring it to the apartment. About five?”

The painting had been tested for fingerprints and any residual evidence that might help in the search for the person who had destroyed it, so there was no reason it couldn’t be moved, but Lucian didn’t think it was a good idea. “It will be horrible no matter where your father sees the Matisse, but it might be emotionally easier for him to see it in a neutral environment.”

“Or the opposite. At home my father will have the comfort of his surroundings. That’s really all he has left—some artwork and some memories.”

“And you. He has you.”

Emeline didn’t react except to reach for her pocketbook. Lucian knew the meeting was over. He felt disappointed and
wasn’t sure why. He waited for her to stand, but she didn’t. She just sat there looking down at the black leather satchel.

“Do you have a few more minutes?” she asked without glancing up.

“Yes, of course.”

Opening the bag, Emeline reached inside and pulled out a few sheets of paper. She unfolded them, laid them on her lap and smoothed down the center crease with her forefinger. Still staring down at the type that Lucian couldn’t read upside down, she said, “I printed these e-mails out. My e-mail address at work is easy enough for anyone to find—it’s right on the store’s Web site.”

“What store?”

“My father’s framing store.”

“You work there?” Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He was stunned.

“I grew up there… At some point Andre was too sick to run it anymore. I have a graduate degree in art history. It just made sense.” She was still running her finger back and forth on the paper as if she were trying to iron out the fold mark.

“What are those?”

“About six months after they brought me home, my adopted parents took me to see the same reincarnationist who was in the news with you last month.”

“Malachai Samuels?”

“Yes. I saw both him and another doctor at the foundation, Beryl Talmage.”

“Why?” As soon as he asked, he was sorry.

“My aunt and uncle thought I might know things.”

Lucian felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “Know things? How?”

“And they both wanted to believe it so badly,” Emeline said. “It started in the hospital when they saw this…”

She brushed the hair off her forehead and Lucian stared at the small, white crescent-shaped scar above her right eyebrow.

He felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus.

“A birthmark?” he asked.

“Not a birthmark. I got it in the car accident. It’s the same scar in the same place as hers. You recognize it, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. How could you have the same scar?”

“Have you ever heard of walk-ins?”

“In what context?”

“Reincarnation.”

“No.”

She started running her finger up and down the crease of the page again. Lucian strained to read what she was trying so hard to wear away.

“There’s a theory,” she said, “that in order to accomplish its mission, an advanced soul can walk into another physical body that has been or is about to be abandoned. Like the body of someone about to commit suicide.”

“Or the body of a child in a coma?”

She nodded. “My adopted parents desperately wanted to believe that was what had happened to me instead of the more logical explanation. Our families had spent a lot of time together. I’d loved Solange, I’d looked up to her. She was like an older sister to me. And she was an artist. That was the most amazing thing. She used to pose me, then show me drawings she did of me. I thought she was making magic. Every kid picks up mannerisms and remembers things about the people they are in awe of. But my aunt and uncle were convinced that Solange’s soul, her spirit, had walked into my body when I was in a coma. That she was still alive in me.”