The Memorist

Chapter 3

Vienna, Austria

Thursday, April 24^th-5:15 p.m.

For almost three hundred years experts had entered this same private viewing room to pore over treasures soon to be auctioned off. But how many of them had felt their hearts pounding as fast as Jeremy Logan’s was? Closing the door behind him, he turned the brass key in the lock and listened to the tumblers click into place. The inlaid parquet floor he crossed had been restored and the antique desk he sat at had been refurbished many times over but time hadn’t erased the pentimento of the important discoveries made here. Would his efforts today be added to that history?

At sixty-five, Jeremy was not only the head of the Judaica department of the auction house but the man they called the Jewish Indiana Jones. Over the last thirty-five years he’d recovered hundreds of the thousands of Torahs and other religious artifacts hidden or stolen during World War II. Some he’d dug up like buried treasure, others he’d smuggled across the borders of Communist countries or secured through brokering deals with dangerous operatives who only cared about the money he offered. Even with all these finds to his credit, the one treasure he’d been searching for the longest still eluded him: the solution to his daughter’s distress.

And now here was a possibility that he’d found a clue to that puzzle.

In addition to the whist markers, cribbage board, checkers and chess pieces and playing cards that he could see inside the box, an X-ray of the rosewood gaming case had shown a one-inch-deep false bottom containing a rectangle of either thin cloth or thick paper that even with their sophisticated equipment the technicians hadn’t been able to identify. Now, secluded behind the locked door, Jeremy Logan was about to find out what it was.

Taking off his oatmeal-colored cardigan sweater, he threw it on the chair and pushed up the sleeves of his navy turtleneck. He plucked his reading glasses out of his tousled salt-and-pepper hair, settled them on the bridge of his nose and examined the box. Now that he knew what he was looking for and was using a magnifying glass, Jeremy could see that behind the letter B, there was a constellation etched faintly into the background. This was the only aspect of the box that Meer had never included in her drawings. Studying it, Jeremy was astonished to realize he was looking at the Phoenix constellation, named after the ancient mystical bird that symbolized reincarnation. Along with Malachai Samuels, he’d always thought reincarnation was at the heart of his daughter’s crisis, maintaining that she was haunted by bleeds from a previous and troubled life.

He passionately believed in reincarnation and that circles of souls reincarnate with each other over time, which both makes it more difficult to come into contact with people we’ve had problems with before and easier when we reconnect with those we’ve loved. Family, friends, lovers and those you work with were all part of your soul group; he wished that he could convince Meer to have faith in those around her, to lean on him and Malachai and let them help her find her karmic way. But she was as stubborn a nonbeliever as he was a believer.

He picked up the box, which, like a recalcitrant child, had held on to its secret for all these weeks, and laid it on its back on a felt pad. Inlaid circles of various sizes, carved from different kinds of rare fruitwoods, were set in a random pattern.

The expert he’d met with yesterday in Prague had shown him a similar chest made by the same designer in 1802. It had looked equally enigmatic-a puzzle without a solution-until he’d pointed out the Taurus constellation etched into that box top’s medallion and demonstrated how, when the circles on the bottom were manipulated to match the star pattern, the hidden drawer opened. As if by magic.

Judiciously, Jeremy worked the circles on the Brentano box, as it was referred to in the auction catalog. The first glided easily into place. By nature impatient, Jeremy struggled to go slowly, moving on to the next circle and then the next. He’d been studying the Kabbalah for the last twenty-four years and one of the most important lessons he’d learned was that his impatience resulted from his not being able to tolerate what the present moment had to offer. In the Kabbalah, every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has several layers of meaning. In life, he had learned, every moment did, too. And in every past life.

Taking a deep breath, Jeremy moved the last piece into place and heard a tiny mechanical click as the box’s false bottom slid open. What had been impenetrable before was offered up without quarrel now and as he looked down on a folded sheet of paper that had likely been hidden there for almost two hundred years he was both exalted and, suddenly, frightened.