The Magic Circle (36 page)

“Ariel!” I heard with a Doppler effect, and screeched to a halt, nearly wrapping myself around a tree.

I gingerly crosshatched back through the woods. Wolfgang, skating between the trees, pulled aside fir branches laden with last night’s snow as he passed. As he released each branch, the load dropped on the ground with a soft
plump
. When we met in the dappled light, he regarded me with a questioning but stern expression, so I thought I’d better get in the first word.

“Why, Dr. Hauser, what a surprise,” I said, trying to coax out a smile, though I still wasn’t sure if he’d found our tracks. “We run into each other in the oddest places, don’t we? I thought you were in Nevada just now.”

“I told you I would come if I possibly could do so,” he said in a tone of mild irritation. “I’ve driven all night to get here.”

“So I guess you decided to loosen up from your trip by going for a spin on skis out here in the middle of nowhere?” I commented dryly.

“Ariel, please don’t play games with me. I went to your room as soon as I arrived at the Lodge—the sun wasn’t even up yet. When I learned you weren’t there, I was horribly worried about what might have become of you. But before sending up a general alarm, I went to the car park and saw that your car was missing too. It snowed last night: the only fresh tracks from the car park headed in this direction, so I came and found your car in the woods. I followed your ski tracks here. Now it’s your turn to explain what you thought you were doing skiing all by yourself, miles away from the Lodge, before dawn?”

Whew—so he thought I was skiing by myself, which meant he hadn’t reached our tracks. That rescued me from the next step, something I’d already been braced for: lying without compunction. But it still didn’t get me out of the woods.

“I was hoping a little exercise would help me work off some of that cognac your sister and I slugged down in my room last night,” I told him. And it was true.

“Bettina?” he said in amazement—so I knew I’d pushed the right button. “Bettina is staying here at the Lodge?”

“We tied one on,” I said, but when Wolfgang looked puzzled I translated, “We got drunk together, and I pumped her for information about you. Now I understand why you told me my uncle Lafcadio was just an acquaintance of yours, not a friend. But in our lengthy conversation on the topic of
my
family, you just might have mentioned that your sister has been living with my uncle these past ten years.”

“I’m sorry,” said Wolfgang, shaking his head as if he were just waking up—as he might well feel, if he’d truly been driving all night. He looked at me with cloudy deep blue eyes. “I haven’t seen Bettina in rather a long time. I suppose she explained that to you, too?”

“Yes, but I’ll bet I’d like your explanation better. I mean, why would two people like you and Bamb—like your sister—become strangers to one another, just because of the overdramatized histrionics of somebody like Uncle Laf?”

“Actually, I still see my sister from time to time,” said Wolfgang, not really answering my question. “But I am surprised to learn that Lafcadio brought her here from Vienna like this. He must not have guessed that I might be here, too.”

“He’ll know now,” I told him. “Let’s all have breakfast together and see what kind of fireworks start popping.”

Wolfgang stuck his poles in the snow and put his hands on my shoulders. “You’re very brave to plan such a meal. Have I said that I missed you, and that Nevada is a truly awful place?”

“I thought Germans always loved all those neon lights,” I said.

“Germans?” said Wolfgang, taking his hands from my shoulders. “Who told you—oh, Bettina. It appears you
did
get her drunk.”

I smiled back and shrugged. “My favorite interrogation technique: I learned it at the breast of my mother,” I admitted. “By the way, since it now seems that you and I are practically related, through this attachment of my uncle and your sister, I thought I might get more personal and ask things I want to know about you—like for instance, what does the ‘K’ stand for?”

Wolfgang was still smiling, but raised one brow in curiosity. “It stands for my middle name: Kaspar. Why do you ask?”

“Like Casper, the friendly ghost?” I said with a laugh.

“Like Balthazar, Melchior, and Kaspar—you know, those three wise Magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus.” Then Wolfgang added: “Who suggested that you ask me that question?”

Boy, I might be terrific at interrogating the incredibly soused, but it seemed I was the world’s worst, myself, at handling unexpected questions. I tried a punt.

“I guess you don’t know I have a photographic memory,” I said—not really answering
his
question. “I saw your name logged into that sign-in book at the site, including all that
Herr Professor Doktor
business, and the fact that you’re stationed at Krems, Austria. Where on earth
is
Krems, anyway?” I rattled on blithely, hoping I could wriggle from beneath Wolfgang’s penetrating and rather suspicious gaze.

“Actually, it’s where you and I will be heading together on Tuesday,” Wolfgang said. “So you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

I tried not to do a double-take, since my head was starting to throb with the effect of what liquor I hadn’t managed to ski off.

“You mean
this
Tuesday?” I said, feeling slightly hysterical. This couldn’t be happening again—not now. Not after I’d just found Sam, and had no way to find him again until he found
me
. “Like, the day after tomorrow we’re heading to Austria?”

Wolfgang nodded, and when he spoke it was with a certain urgency.

“Pastor Dart phoned me in Nevada yesterday. He’d been trying to find us both—you and me—and he was relieved to learn I knew where you could be reached,” he told me. “Our plane to Vienna will leave New York late Monday night—tomorrow. In order to catch that flight, we must fly all day; that’s why I drove last night from Nevada to get here, pick you up en route, and get us both back in time to pack. I thought, since you’d told me Maxfield would be here anyway, he could bring your car later and you’d come with me. There are many things you and I need to discuss in private before we leave the country. We’ll have time for breakfast here, of course, but we must—”

“Whoa!” I cried, holding up my ski mitt. “May I ask exactly
why
you and I are suddenly jet-setting off to Vienna together? Or has something escaped me?”

“Oh, didn’t I say?” he said, smiling somewhat abashedly. “Our Soviet visas have been approved by the embassy. Vienna is our first stop en route to Leningrad.”

Wolfgang had brought me a little phrase book of Russian for travelers, and I read it as he drove back from Sun Valley. I wished I could find some Russian words right now that would truly reflect my current state of mind. I did find words for constipation
(zahpoer)
, for diarrhea
(pahnoes)
, and for bowel
(kyee-SHESCH-nyeek)
—this last, in my view, about as close as I was likely to get to the feel of the thing. But though I’d learned Wolfgang himself was fairly fluent in Russian, I felt somehow awkward asking him to translate the expression “holy shit.”

To describe brunch as rather strained would be more than an understatement. Laf glared at me when I blew in with Wolfgang, and Bambi and her brother embraced. Then Olivier spent the entire
meal
glaring at me when he learned in swift succession that: a) Bambi was Wolfgang’s sister; b) Wolfgang was driving me back home today, while Olivier chauffeured my car and my cat; and c) Wolfgang and I were leaving at the crack of dawn to depart for an idyllic journey together to the USSR.

But Laf perked up a bit when I informed him our first stop was really Vienna—where he himself was scheduled to return from San Francisco Monday night—and that I’d come see him there in the event we’d left anything still unsaid. Before I left the dining room, though, I took Laf aside.

“Laf,” I said, “I know how you feel about Bambi’s brother. But since he and I will be together in Vienna on business, I’m asking you to make an exception in this one case, and invite us both to your house. Is there anything else about our family situation that you believe I need to know right now?”

“Gavroche,” said Laf with a sigh, “you have the eyes of your mother Jersey, those ice blue eyes she has always been so proud of. But yours are more like Pandora’s—wild leopard eyes—because yours are made of the pure
green
ice. I don’t blame Wolfgang: I don’t really know how any man could resist eyes like these. I surely could not. But, Gavroche, you must be certain that you will resist the
men
—until you learn exactly in what kind of situation you are involved.”

That was all Laf would tell me, but I knew he was being straight with me. He was worried about me, not about some feud with Bambi’s family or with ours.

I kissed Laf, hugged Bambi, handed over Jason to Olivier, and shook hands with the silent Volga Dragonoff who never smiled. As we headed back the hundred fifty miles to my basement apartment along the Snake River, I wondered what in hell I really was getting myself into. And I wondered how on earth I could contact Sam before I left and let him know.

Wolfgang gave me an earful on the way home about our impending trip. At the last moment he’d arranged this brief layover in Vienna for us en route to Russia, and for a reason—but not the one he had given to the Pod.

Though the IAEA was based in Vienna, Wolfgang’s office was in Krems, a medieval town just up the Danube at the beginning of the Wachau, the most famous wine-growing valley in all of Austria. Wolfgang had told the Pod we’d need to check in there and go over a lot of paperwork, involving IAEA philosophy as well as our specific mission in the USSR, before he could take me into Russia. And it seems the Pod bought this scenario.

I hadn’t remembered Krems earlier, but once Wolfgang mentioned the Wachau, I recalled it from my childhood. Just beyond it was another part of the Danube Valley, the
Nibelungengau
, where the early, magical inhabitants of Austria once lived. It was part of the setting of Richard Wagner’s
Ring of the Nibelungenlied
, the cycle of four operas of which my grandmother Pandora’s recordings were today world renowned. I also remembered that in the Wachau, Jersey and I had once climbed the steep trail leading up through the woods overlooking the blue-grey Danube to the ruins of Dürnstein—the castle where Richard the Lionhearted had been captured while returning home from the Crusades, and where he was held prisoner for ransom for thirteen months.

But Wolfgang’s private reason for going to Krems was centered around another spot in the Wachau: the famous monastery of Melk. Once the castle-fortress of the House of Babenberg, the Habsburgs’ predecessors, and today a Benedictine abbey, Melk possessed a library of nearly one hundred thousand volumes, many of them very ancient. According to Wolfgang, whose story jibed with Laf’s in the hot pool, it was at Melk that Adolf Hitler first did his own research into the secret history of the runes, like those in Aunt Zoe’s manuscript. Apparently it was Zoe who’d asked him to bring me to Melk for our own research.

We got back about five, and Wolfgang dropped me at my cellar door. We agreed to meet at the airport at nine-thirty to catch the ten
A.M
. connecting flight to Salt Lake. That left this evening to get ready for the trip. I tried to concentrate on what I needed to take for a two-week trek, most of it in the Soviet Union where I’d never visited at this time of year. But I kept feeling I was forgetting something. The travel leaflet Wolfgang gave me recommended bringing bottled water and plenty of toilet paper, so I packed those first. And though I didn’t know much about Leningrad in early spring, I did recall that Vienna in April was no Paris—it was bitterly cold, requiring “thermal chic.”

All the while, I was trying to collect my thoughts and to figure out what I could do about contacting Sam. It occurred to me that Sam might actually dial into my computer
before
tomorrow morning, to test out our new technique up front. I could pick up any such message on my way to the airport, and even if I had no time just then, at least I’d know where to fax back a message when I got to Salt Lake, or from Kennedy when we got to New York. It would be a good idea anyway, I realized, not to just dash off with no farewells, but to check in at work for any last-minute instructions from my boss, Pastor Dart.

I’d set my packed duffels beside the front door and was about to turn in when I heard Olivier upstairs. He was banging around with the skis, so I went up in my robe and fur-lined moccasins to see if I could help.

“You probably haven’t had anything to eat since brunch” was Olivier’s first comment. Which was perfectly true—I’d forgotten. “I was going to make smoked trout mousse on dilled rye bread for dinner, for the little argonaut and me, to commiserate over your departure tomorrow. I guess it will be just the two of us, dining as bachelors after that—but would you care to join us in a bite right now?”

“I’d love to,” I told him. Though I was dead on my feet, I suddenly realized I might have no time for breakfast tomorrow, and there’d likely be no food but peanuts on my flights till well past noon. “Shall I whip us up a hot toddy to wash it down?” I suggested. I wanted to apologize to Olivier for how our weekend had turned out, though I soon learned it wasn’t necessary.

“
Bien sûr,
” Olivier said with a grin, tossing the skis on the cold-room rack and hanging the poles up by their loops. “You’ve been forgiven some of my anger, my darling one, now that you’ve introduced me to the beautiful, bountiful Bambita,” he went on. “I think I’m in love—and she isn’t even close to being the cowgirl that I’ve always imagined I pined for in my heart.”

“But she and my uncle Lafcadio
do
seem to be an item,” I pointed out. “And they live in Vienna, pretty far from here.”

“That’s okay,” said Olivier. “Your uncle’s skiing days are over, even if his fiddling ones are not. I’m willing to follow this woman down the slopes like a slave forever, just to watch the way her
wedeln
swings—you know? And now that you’re so chummy with her brother, she might come here again to visit us one day soon.”