The Hypnotist

FIFTY-SEVEN

“A Greek god that I am purchasing…”

At ACT headquarters, Matt Richmond and Doug Comley stood at the table listening to Malachai’s voice coming over the phone line. Elgin was playing the recording for them on his cell phone. His innocuous pen was one of the agency’s most popular recording devices. Even if someone noticed it and took it apart, the high-tech recording device was tucked so high up inside the cylinder, it was impossible to spot.

“Based on all the legends, this could very well be the receptacle for one of our fabled Memory Tools.

“I plan to do something noble with the sculpture itself once I have rescued what it hides, perhaps offer the giant to the new museum. Goodness knows from Fouquelle’s description, I don’t have a suitable place for it.

“But what matters most is that now I may finally be able to prove reincarnation and by doing so prove that my son Albert’s soul has indeed migrated into the new child my wife and I have been blessed with.

“Yours,

“Frederick L. Lennox”

“And have you identified which sculpture the letter refers to?” The speaker wasn’t Malachai-Lucian knew his voice by now. Based on Elgin’s reports, Lucian guessed it was Reed Winston and mouthed his name to Doug and Matt.

“There’s no way to be sure, since Lennox left the museum over a hundred pieces, all from that same area, but based on what I’ve been able to find out I’ve narrowed it down to about a dozen that could fit this description.”

“I can’t work with a dozen pieces, Malachai.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Can you get into the museum’s computers?”

“And do what?”

The three FBI agents watched the phone as if looking at it would give them more facts than they were getting from the voices. All of them were alert, hoping they were about to get a break on the Malachai Samuels case, but Lucian was the only one of them who was sweating. Hearing about yet more information that-if his hypnosis sessions were to be believed-connected to one of his past lives was taking its toll. First there was what he’d learned in France about Fouquelle. Now this.

“I need you to figure out which piece of sculpture contains the Memory Tool, Reed. I don’t care how you do it or what it costs. Bribe someone at the Met or hire someone to hack into their computer system to get the information. It doesn’t matter to me what you do or what it costs. I have to know what piece we’re looking for.”

“Then what? We can’t steal a piece of sculpture from the goddamn Metropolitan Museum!”

“It’s not the sculpture we want but what’s inside it,” Malachai said. “This could be it. Worth more than half the art in the Met. Incalculably valuable. This could be a map to our memories from lives past. Don’t you understand?”

Doug glanced over at Lucian and nodded. The look said, We have him. And he might be right. The man they’d been following, laying traps for and eavesdropping on had just ordered a hack of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s computer system.

“Can you do it, Reed?” the reincarnationist asked. “Can you get me the name of the piece of sculpture that Lennox bought from Fouquelle’s dig? We don’t have a lot of time. The galleries that house these sculptures are being rebuilt. Once the pieces go back on display it will be so much more difficult for us to get to them.”

One thing the recording proved was that Darius Shabaz hadn’t lied. Malachai didn’t know anything about Hypnos specifically. That meant up until now the reincarnationist hadn’t been involved in the scheme to trade the sculpture. While Reed and Malachai continued plotting on the recording, Lucian opened his notebook, flipped past the pages of the women who were always there, waiting, wanting something from him, and with his pencil wrote out the word that Malachai probably would have killed for-might have already killed for-might kill for again. The name that was tied to Lucian’s regression sessions, that would give the FBI the break it needed to finally get Malachai Samuels. He passed the notebook to Comley. In the center of the page was just one word.

Hypnos.