The Memorist

Chapter 56

Baden, Austria

Tuesday, April 29^th-5:39 p.m.

The terror coursing through her made it almost impossible for Meer to speak. The man holding the gun wore a dark slicker, its hood up. Frantic, she looked around for Sebastian…and then saw him on the ground, unmoving, lying behind the altar beneath the crucifix.

“You’re going to wind up like your friend over there unless you give us what you found up here.” The man whispered the words harshly in a thick German accent but she understood every syllable.

“What did you do to him?”

“Your friends, your father…we can keep going with this game, hurting everyone you know and love until we get what we want.”

“My father? Is he all right?”

“For now, yes. But how he winds up is up to you.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “What you want is there.” She pointed to the cross.

“Get it.”

It was only four steps to the crucifix. Reaching up, feeling between the wooden body of Jesus and the flat surface of the cross, Meer’s fingertips found what felt like the edge of a sheaf of paper. She’d been searching in the wrong place before. It wasn’t buried in the ground. It was up here. She pulled it out.

Insects had eaten through the paper, mold had attacked it. Only a few random marks and the nauseating stench of rot were left. Meer lifted her head up toward the hut’s roof to escape the overwhelming scent. Drops of rain came through the cracks in the two-hundred-year-old structure, hanging for a second and then falling, one and then another splattering her on the forehead and cheeks.

Was she really holding what had once been Beethoven’s score of the memory song, written in his own hand? He’d gone to so much trouble to convince everyone he’d never found these notes. No longer here to protect what little of his work was left, she could do it for him. Moving her hands a half inch, she positioned the score under the rain that dripped through the cracks in the ceiling.

The few still viable marks blurred as the rain fell and the ink ran.

The man in the ski mask grabbed the disintegrating clump out of her hand and looked at it. For one second he wasn’t focused on her and that second was enough for her to run.