The Book of Lost Fragrances

Fifty-seven

SATURDAY, 7:00 P.M.

Jac hadn’t expected so many tubes and bandages. She gripped the door frame. Willed her knees to keep her standing. Forced herself to take in the worst of it.

Behind her, Robbie gasped, “Oh, no!”

The first thing that steadied her was the slight rise and fall of Griffin’s chest under the thin white sheet. The second was her brother’s hand in hers. Together they crossed the threshold and entered the hospital room.

They each took a chair on either side of the bed and began their vigil.

Griffin had taken the bullet Ani’s comrade had intended for Jac. It had gone into the fleshy part of his upper arm. He’d lost some blood, but the doctors had been able to remove the bullet without any trouble. The wound wasn’t life threatening.

His fall had been.

The gunshot’s impact had sent Griffin reeling. He’d cracked his skull against a bronze sculpture. The past six hours had been a nightmare of sketchy information, consultations with doctors, surgery to relieve some of the swelling in his brain, staples to hold his skull together, and, finally, a drug-induced coma.

While Griffin was in the operating room, Inspector Marcher arrived at the hospital. Debriefed Robbie. Took his statement and Jac’s. He told them there’d be a formal inquiry, but Robbie was no longer suspected of murder. His actions had clearly been taken in self-defense. Ani Lodro, also known as Valentine Lee, and her companion, known as William Leclerc, were in custody. Along with the pseudo-journalist found dead six days before, François Lee, they’d been identified as members of the Chinese Mafia. Hired to keep the pottery from getting to the Dalai Lama.

Jac and Robbie sat quietly. The lights in the room were low. Machines blinked red and green. Beeped and hummed. The medicinal odors filled the air. Clean. Crisp. Like the linens on the bed.

“What do we do now?” Jac finally asked her brother.

“We wait.”

“I remember Griffin telling me about seeing the artifacts from King Tutankhamen’s tomb,” Jac said. “How monumental the sarcophagus was. How much gold had been used. How brightly it shone. Griffin said by the time he saw the actual mummy, he’d forgotten that the king was a real man.”

The hydraulic hinge whooshed as the door opened. They both turned. Malachai came in, accompanied by a nurse who told them that only two visitors were allowed at a time. Robbie offered to get some coffee.

Malachai didn’t sit. Not yet. He stood behind Jac and looked down at Griffin.

“How is he?”

“It’s too soon.”

He shifted his gaze to her.

“And how are you?”

She shrugged.

He pulled the chair around so he was sitting next to her instead of on the other side of the bed. “What happened in the museum?”

For the next few minutes, she recounted the events that had occurred during that tense, life-changing half hour. While she spoke, they both watched the still figure on the narrow bed.

Jac tried but couldn’t discern Griffin’s scent over the antiseptic smells. It was the first time since she’d met him fifteen years before that she couldn’t smell it.

After all the fear, anxiety and terror of the past week, not being able to smell him was what broke her. She put her head in her hands. And sobbed.

“How I wish I could do something to help you,” Malachai whispered as he put a tentative hand on her shoulder.

For a moment, they stayed like that. She cried, and he tried to console her.

Finally, she said: “Griffin always said I put too much pressure on him. That I thought he was better than he was. Except in the museum…”

“What he did was very brave,” Malachai said.

“But look at him. This is my fault.”

“Your fault? I don’t understand.”

Jac didn’t answer.

“The scent affected you, didn’t it?”

“What scent?”

“Jac,” he reprimanded. “Coyness doesn’t become you. Griffin couldn’t smell anything on the pottery. Your brother could just sense it, but it didn’t do anything to him but give him a headache. You have the more sensitive nose. You could smell it, couldn’t you? It helped you remember other lives? All this time, what you thought were psychotic incidents were past-life memories.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Even now?”

“I have hallucinations that seem to be induced by olfactory triggers.”

“Still so cynical.”

She shrugged.

“One day, you’ll outgrow that.” Malachai smiled.

She picked up her head. Straightened her shoulders. This conversation wasn’t going to help. Not Griffin. Not her. “Let’s not do this, okay?”

“I’ve worked with so many people who’ve had past-life memories. Some perceive them but never fully comprehend them-nevertheless, they learn from them. Grow from them.”

“I know you want to believe that’s what’s been afflicting me, but you’re wrong.”

Robbie came through the door holding a tray. “I waited till the nurse was looking the other way,” he said as he handed each of them a cup. “I saw one of Griffin’s doctors downstairs. He seemed optimistic.”

Did Robbie sound as if he were trying to convince himself?

“That’s wonderful,” Malachai said.

Robbie walked around the bed and leaned against the windowsill. “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d just sold you the pottery,” he said to Malachai.

“No one wishes that more than me. But sometimes things happen for a reason. These events played out this way for a purpose. Have either of you seen the news?”

Jac and Robbie said they hadn’t.

Malachai pulled out his cell phone, tapped a web address into it and then handed the device to Jac. She was looking down at the front page of the Herald Tribune international edition.

“There are stories like this on every major news TV station and website. The young man who went off with the Dalai Lama isn’t just a Chinese art student named Xie Ping. He’s a Tibetan Panchen Lama who was kidnapped when he was six years old, taken to China and completely brainwashed. It’s quite a harrowing story. For the past twenty years, his family and the Buddhist community thought he was dead.”

Jac clicked on the photograph of the artist standing next to the Dalai Lama and made it full screen. His Holiness was beaming. Xie looked like a lost soul who had finally found safe harbor. She handed her brother the phone.

“The Panchen Lama and his story will bring a fresh wave of sympathy to the Tibetan cause,” Malachai said.

Robbie nodded. Something in him, Jac thought, was finally at peace.

“There’s a mention in the article about you,” Malachai said to Jac. He held out his hand for the phone, and she gave it back to him. He scrolled through the story, and when he found the part he was looking for, he read aloud.

“‘Miss L’Etoile and her brother exhibited amazing bravery in getting a package to us,’ the Dalai Lama said in an interview after the incident. ‘In it are thirty-three shards of Egyptian pottery inscribed with hieroglyphics. A translation by Griffin North was enclosed. It explains the jar once held an ancient perfume that induced past-life memories. It’s a precious gift. We hope with all our hearts that the far more precious gift of someone’s life was not lost in the effort to get this treasure to us.’”