City of Lost Dreams

TEN

Max Lobkowicz Anderson, shifting uncomfortably under the stern gaze of a priest, was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when his life had gotten really weird. You could, he thought, go all the way back to the day five years before, when his father had called him to say that the Czech government had decided to restitute twenty-two castles and palaces that had been seized from the family in 1948. In a single gesture he had been transformed from a guy taking a few years off to find himself (drums, weed, Southern California) to landowning European aristocracy.

Max looked around him at the somber and magnificent interior of SS. Cyril and Methodius’s Cathedral and tried to concentrate on the mass. He wasn’t raised religious and, though he enjoyed the rituals, had never quite been able to decipher these things. He had come with Pols and Jose. After a few minutes of rest, Pols had been able to finish her concert, but Max was really worried about her. He was doing everything he could to keep her from getting overtired, which today meant bringing them to the mass in his car rather than have them take the tram. And that way he could get a good lunch into her afterward, too, at a restaurant she liked next door to the church. Nico, back from London, had used the offer of lunch to tag along, though Max was sure he, too, was keeping an eye on Pols.

Max was eager to get back to his grandfather’s secret library in the basement of the palace, where he’d found some books about Philippine Welser. He was intrigued by Philippine’s husband, too. Archduke Ferdinand (Order of the Golden Fleece, naturally) had been a courageous soldier, but seemed ambivalent about his princely duties and a lot more interested in alchemy.

There weren’t many people in the cathedral today, though it was an impressive place. Like much of Prague, it was steeped in a complicated history and awash with emotions great and terrible. It was here that the Czech patriots who had assassinated the Nazi Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich had made their last stand on June 17, 1942. Despite a misfiring pistol, they had managed to wound the bloodthirsty and cruel Heydrich on May 27, and the squad, which had parachuted in from London, had evaded capture while he languished. But when Heydrich finally kicked the bucket, the Gestapo had gone into high gear, and tortured people until they got answers, including showing one child his mother’s head in a fish tank. Once the Nazis knew that this church was the hideout, they began to try to force out the squad with tear gas and bombs. You could still see the bullet holes in the walls and visit the crypt where the squad had committed suicide rather than be captured. All that had happened right here, where Max was sitting, not paying attention to the priest.

You could say his life had really gotten weird when he had first taken the drug Westonia. After the drug, Max had never been able to see anything quite the same again. Walking around the palace (his palace) in Prague or the castle (his castle) in Nelahozeves, he knew he was surrounded by the energy of great lives, great passions. Like it wasn’t intimidating enough to be surrounded by portraits of your illustrious ancestors sporting the Order of the Golden Fleece on their fucking doublets.

And then there was the knowledge that his ancestors had been part of some secret Order of the Golden Fleece, a book containing the mystical theory of everything, or spells of ultimate power, or maybe just a load of crap. None of his ancestors had bothered to leave Max any clear instructions about what it was. Or where it was. Or how he was supposed to protect it. Or if there were any other members to the secret order other than him. Or what the secret handshake was, or if there were annual meetings. If they had left instructions, they had been destroyed or misplaced. Or hidden. Or used to line pie tins by an illiterate housemaid, like some of John Dee’s papers had been.

Every other day he got an invitation to join a secret order. It was part of who he was now, the thirteenth in a line of princes. He had been courted by the Knights of the Triangle. The Brotherhood of the Rooster. Gentlemen of the Bronzed Codpiece. Maybe the secret Order of the Golden Fleece was just another version of those. An excuse to dress up in costumes and try to pretend you were as cool as the people who founded your dynasty.

Maybe one of those books in the basement would contain something helpful.

Max looked at the little man seated next to him. Nico believed that the knowledge contained in the book of the Fleece was science, but an advanced science that, four centuries later, modern science was only beginning to catch up to. Like Westonia, which activated glial cells in the brain and allowed you to experience nonlinear time. Which turned out to be the real nature of time. Now it was understood that particles could be in more than one place at one time and that there were probably multiple universes. What else was spelled out in the Fleece? Did the knowledge go all the way back to the Greeks or further? Was it some kind of basic manual for use of the planet, like the unified field theory that Einstein had dreamed of? Had the alchemists, unfettered by the strictly labeled confines of modern science, students of physics, medicine, biology, chemistry, and astronomy, as well as philosophy and religion, discovered the basic laws that dictated the universe and the way to manipulate them?

Nico had been helping him track down clues to the Fleece, but right now the only quest that mattered was finding something to help Pollina. Nico was now planning on going to Vienna to help Sarah.

Sarah. She was unlike anyone Max had ever met. She was tied to these deep mysteries of his life, she understood them better than anyone else, and yet she was constantly rejecting them, too. And rejecting him. She had made it clear she had no interest in joining their lives, which he knew she imagined would be some sort of prince consort tedium of fund-raisers and parties and inherited, unearned privilege. He had been too irritated with her uncompromising certainty to try to make her see it all differently. Also she wasn’t totally wrong. Max had quickly learned that being the head of a museum meant you spent at least five nights a week either asking people for money at your own fund-raisers or trying to poach potential donors from other nonprofits.

Yes, he was still in love with her, but if he was honest, it was hard to picture Sarah in his world. He could picture her delving into a manuscript with a look of intense concentration or pulling him into the cloakroom of a restaurant, putting one hand over his mouth and the other hand down his pants. But helping him to arrange catering for a fund-raising event? Being diplomatic and charming to investors? It was like putting pearls around the neck of an eagle: the combination diminished both things.

And he wasn’t going to turn his back on his life to follow her. First off, he was pretty sure she didn’t want anyone following her. And second, the museum would fall apart, and everything his grandfather had tried to save would be lost again. This time forever, sold at auction. He couldn’t be responsible for losing a four-hundred-year-old fortune. If his future children wanted to walk away, he’d be fine with that, he wouldn’t force it on anyone, but Max’s parents were gone, and he had no siblings, and this was apparently his lot in life.

What were you supposed to do when the person you loved didn’t fit into your world?

Max’s thoughts were interrupted by a shout coming from the nave. People turned in their seats, scuffling and shushing.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” a man was shouting in Czech. The priest stopped in midsentence. All around Max, heads were craning to see what was happening. He stood up.

A wild-eyed man in a tattered and dirty gray pinstripe suit and blue and white tie was being restrained by one of the church functionaries, a slender young man who was no match for him. Max strode forward to help, with Nico at his heels.

“Max Lobkowicz!” exclaimed the man, grabbing at Max’s jacket. “Thank God! But you shouldn’t be here—it’s too dangerous. They’ll kill you, too. It’s terrible, sir; we’ve heard on the radio what they’ve done . . . the families, all dead . . .” He started to cry.

Max, taken aback, turned to look at the church functionary, who was calling for security.

“Sir,” the man whispered, still clinging to Max and staring at him with panicked eyes, “I can’t find my cyanide capsule! You must help me. Shoot me now before they get me! Shoot me!”

And then a security guard was grappling with the man and hauling him away. After a brief speech of apology from the priest and a blessing on the poor man’s soul, the mass resumed. Max noted that Nico had disappeared.

“You knew that man?” whispered Jose.

“No . . .” said Max. “But he seemed to know me. He called me by name.”

Pols said nothing, lost in prayer. Max wasn’t sure if she had even been aware of the whole thing until she asked about it after the service was over.

“Someone off his meds, I guess,” Max said.

“And Harriet was here?”

“Harriet?” Max was surprised. “No.”

“Oh. I thought I smelled her.”

Max decided to let that one go.

The incident was the talk of the family-style restaurant next door, which was where most of the congregation adjourned for Sunday lunch at long tables with pitchers of beer. No one had gotten a good look at the individual in question, and so the interruption was largely blamed on drugs. The Czech Republic had the most liberal laws concerning drug possession in the EU, but there was always grumbling about the African narcotics peddlers in Wenceslas Square. The popularity of violent American films and television was also mentioned and decried.

Max, happy to see Pols tucking into a bowl of soup between Jose and the priest, found himself in conversation with a young man from the church. It turned out he was part of the staff who worked at the museum run out of the crypt. “Oh, these reenactors,” he said, shaking his head. “They make us crazy. I don’t know how he got into the crypt. We usually keep it locked during mass. His costume and makeup were very accurate, I will say.”

Max tried to remember what he had learned about Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate Heydrich. He knew it had originated in England, where Czechs who had fled formed a government-in-exile to work with the allies to infiltrate the Nazis. He knew that because his grandfather had been a part of the government-in-exile. His grandfather Max Lobkowicz, whom he resembled closely.

Jan Kubiš, a paratrooper, had thrown the grenade that killed Heydrich. After the assassination, the Nazis suspected that the men had been sheltered in the town of Lidice before escaping to Prague and hiding in the church. Hitler had every man in the town of Lidice executed and the women sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The town was burned to the ground and then the ruins were leveled. Five thousand people died in the reprisals.

Max walked to the cashier to pay as Jose helped Pols get her coat on.

“Thoughts, my friend, on our little interruption?” It was Nico, pulling him into the hallway of the restaurant.

“The man was dressed in old clothes,” Max said. “About seventy years out of date. And did you see the look in his eyes?”

“Remind you of anything?” The little man seemed uncharacteristically intent and serious.

“Yeah, the whole thing was exactly like when Sarah pulled Saint John of Nepomuk out of the river. What happened? I assumed you followed them?”

“The security guard took him out and told him never to come back. The man took off running through the streets. Seemed terrified out of his mind. I tried to keep up, but . . .” Nico shrugged.

“I don’t think it was a historical reenactment,” said Max.

“Nor do I. And I made some calls, to see if anyone was able to identify Saint John at the morgue.”

“And?”

“The body has disappeared.”