The Six Messiahs

chapter 5

SEPTEMBER 23, 1894

Discretion is required in describing the events of the last few hours. A request has been made to me for assistance. Having served the interests of the Crown on more than one previous occasion, I have remained ever willing to lend my services to that royal office again in whichever way circumstances describe. Suffice it to say that should the Queen herself have appeared in my cabin to make this appeal, it would have carried no greater influence upon my sympathies.

The facts are these: A book has been stolen. A book of enormous significance to the Church of England and consequently the throne. The Latin Vulgate Bible, the oldest biblical manuscript in the Anglican Church. Vanished from the Bodleian Library at Oxford six weeks ago. Public announcement has been withheld; the Vulgate was kept in a vault, not on display—the only persons likely to miss it to this point are scholars. It is hoped the manuscript can be recovered before such an announcement becomes necessary; however, as yet no requests for the ransom of its return have been received. As more time passes, it seems increasingly unlikely that a ransom is the thieves' objective. A secret investigation by a friend of mine on behalf of the Crown has been under way since the crime occurred and it has led him to this same ship making its crossing to America.

That this incident is central to the difficulties we have experienced since boarding the Elbe is unmistakable. I have set down elsewhere the events of the past few days surrounding

Lionel Stern, the attempted robbery of the Book of Zohar, and the murder of Mr. Rupert Selig. Three of the men responsible for those crimes are now themselves dead; a fourth man has either flung himself overboard, as did another of his accomplices, or is still in hiding somewhere on board; an exhaustive search is even now under way. The sabotage these men brought against the ship's engines has been discovered—an explosive charge detonated in the electrical generators—and thanks to the due diligence of the engineering crew its damage already repaired. We will arrive in New York tomorrow only hours later than originally scheduled and that due as much to the rough weather we have passed through as to the sinister efforts of these villains.

The man I mistakenly took for their ringleader was, as I suspected, posing as a Catholic priest—this concluded from observing an accumulation of small, troubling details: odd boots, rosary beads hanging off the wrong pocket, a ring bearing a Masonic design—but neither is he a criminal. He is, in fact, a man previously well known to me, whose credentials as an agent of the Crown are, or at least once were, beyond reproach.

We have spoken only briefly, and that has been taken up with the urgencies of our situation: His unexpected appearance foiled a potentially deadly attack against me by turning the assassin's own weapon against him. No opportunity for us to discuss the events of the ten years passed since we last saw one another has presented itself; he seemed reluctant to part with any details during the short time spent together; we have agreed to find time for that discussion once the ship has made port. In the interim, I have confided in no one, not even Innes, about his true identity.

The rest of our passengers remain uniformly unaware of the difficulties we have been through on the Elbe, due in part to the storm which confined them to quarters during the critical hours, and not a little to our effective muzzling of the American newshound Pinkus, who remains at this hour under something approaching house arrest. My friend is even now visiting privately with Pinkus to ensure his silence on these matters after we reach New York. A daunting task given Pinkus's propensity for blab, but if any man could persuade Pinkus to, as they say, keep his trap shut, my money is on JS.

I am saddened to report that my friend is dreadfully altered since I last saw him. In truth, even beyond the effectiveness of his disguise, he is hardly recognizable. Whatever damage he has endured, whatever dark corners of the human spirit he has visited, I am afraid the effect has not been at all to the good.

In this instance, I fervently hope the keenness of my observations, a habit of mind which he helped so much to instill in me, is entirely wrong.

A dense, multispired skyline poked through the morning mist and announced to the brothers Doyle their first glimpse of New York; from this vantage point, the city threatened to burst the seams of the slender island on which it rested. The Elbe's passengers clustered around them on the upper deck, marveling at the wonders of this muscular continent.

What prodigious energy, thought Doyle. What enormous concentration of ambition. And what proud testimony it offered to the potential of man's creative vitality. He wiped a tear from his eye, stirred to his soul by the magnificence of imagination that could result in such a city.

Completely unaware of the depth of his brother's feeling, and loathe to appear the bumpkin, as they sailed by her Innes feigned indifference to the epic dimensions of the Statue of Liberty, although his heart secretly raced with hormonal agitation at the irrational image she inspired; an entire nation populated by towering, voluptuous women wearing nothing but diaphanous, loosely draped robes.

When Pinkus finally appeared on deck in the company of Father Devine, Innes thought he looked remarkably subdued, shaken really, his bouncy canine readiness displaced by a pale, apologetic rue.

"What's the matter with old Pinkus?" he wondered.

"I don't know," said Doyle. "Perhaps he found confession to be bad for the soul."

A stately turn up the Hudson brought the Elbe into the company of tugboats flocking to nose her gently into mooring at the West Side docks. Captain Hoffner invited Doyle onto the bridge for the final approach, taking him aside to offer formal thanks and to let him know their search of the ship had failed to uncover a fourth assassin. The five coffins had been confiscated and extra security arranged at the customhouse to ensure that this last man, if he was still on board, did not slip off in the guise of an officer or passenger. Doyle once again politely turned away the Captain's inquiries about Father Devine, saying only that in the heat of the moment his original negative assessment of the man had turned out to be unfounded. With that they shook hands, respected equals, and exchanged their good-byes.

As Doyle and Innes cleared customs and stepped through the doors into America, a brass marching band stationed in the foyer ripped into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Festively decked out in red, white, and blue bunting, the entrance hall sported a field of hand-painted signs welcoming the famous author—many of which seemed to have been crafted with the impression that Doyle was, himself, Sherlock Holmes—dancing above the heads of an alarmingly large and demonstrative crowd.

Good Christ; they're chanting my name as if I were a football team. The epidemic of overfamiliarity in individual Americans had never troubled Doyle before, but encountering it at this mob level gave it the appearance of a prelude to human sacrifice.

Arrayed in front of police department sawhorses that restrained the masses was a constellation of greater and lesser lights from the firmament of Manhattan celebrity—luminaries from the publishing and newspaper worlds, dashing matinee idols, plump haberdashers, slick-haired restaurateurs, and a squadron of obscure city officials, interwoven throughout by a comely brood of decorative chorus girls; apparently Pinkus had not overstated this one critical aspect of his story, realized Innes ecstatically.

A gigantic, loose-limbed mountain of a man in riding boots, jodhpurs, a canary-yellow cutaway jacket, and a beaver hat perched on a shaggy head half the size of a buffalo's broke out of the pack and clapped a smothering bear hug onto Doyle before he could defend himself.

"Bless my soul! Bless my soul!" bellowed the man in a deep, creamy Virginia accent.

I must know this man, thought Doyle, thoroughly panicked. Considering the way he's greeting me, we must be first cousins at the least.

The giant stepped back and shouted into Doyle's face, "Proud, sir! It does my heart proud to see you here!"

Doyle searched desperately for some clue to his identity— surely he would have remembered someone this size. Over the giant's shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Innes, who had decided his dress-blue Royal Fusiliers uniform the only appropriate outfit for their arrival, being sucked into a cloud of perfume, feminine ruffles, and gargantuan floral hats.

"Didn't I promise you a fine how-do-you-do in New York? Did we not do it up right for you?" said the giant, his smile exposing a piano's worth of unnaturally gleaming white teeth.

"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, sir," said Doyle, uneasily eyeing the battalion of celebrities bearing sharply down on them.

"Why it's Pepperman, Mr. Conan Doyle," said the man, doffing his hat gallantly. "Major Rolando Pepperman. Impresario of your literary tour; at your service."

"Major Pepperman, of course, do forgive me...."

"No, not at all. It is I who have failed you, sir, by not providing in my cables a more detailed description of my person."

His startling blue eyes sparkled, the muscles bulging his jacket crackled with excess energy—everything about the man seemed built to an incredibly overscaled set of plans: America's exuberant essence distilled down into one gigantic prototype.

Pepperman shot an arm around Doyle's shoulder and turned him to face the crowd: "I give you Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the great Sherlock Holmes! Welcome to New York!"

Pepperman thrust his hat up into the air; the crowd shifted into an even higher gear of frenzy as the band dueled them for control of the audible threshold. A battery of photographers' flash powder exploded in Doyle's wide-open eyes, leaving black spots dancing in place of the faces of the New York elite as they pressed in around him.

Doyle shook fifty hands and received as many business cards; the cacophony swallowed their bearers' shouted messages but Doyle retained the impression that every one of these somebodies wanted him to either eat at their restaurant, appear in their magazine, attend their latest theatrical triumph, or reside at their deluxe hotel. The disquieting phrase "in exchange for a commercial endorsement" often followed hard on the heels of these flattering offers.

The only desire in the crowd that remained unclear to Doyle was exactly what the spectacular show girls wanted from him, although Innes, the axis of a cluster of them orbiting nearby, interpreted their giggling avoidances of his overtures as a solid basis for indulging his eager repertoire of wishful thinking.

Pressed into Doyle's possession by a hierarchy of politicians were a scroll proclaiming an official welcome and a hefty be-ribboned brass object he guessed must represent a key to the city, but which seemed to have greater utility as a weapon. Before any further business could be conducted, or Doyle was prompted to beat back the hordes with his key, Pepperman led his author past the sawhorses to the street through the solid block of humanity and a waiting fleet of carriages.

In the event he would be called upon to deliver an impromptu response—he had been warned Americans loved nothing so much as giving and receiving speeches—Doyle tried to assemble a string of suitable thoughts to express to these people, but as he climbed up beside Pepperman on the running board of their carriage, the rank and file demonstrated no visible interest in anything other than continuing to scream their lungs out in his general direction. Doyle waved to them, then waved some more, then finally followed Pepperman's earlier example and thrust his hat into the air, apparently a signal peculiar to American audiences to behave as if they had entirely lost their minds.

Scanning the back of the crowd as the hysteria played out, Doyle spotted a solemn Lionel Stern leaving the customhouse doors. A plain coffin carrying the body of Rupert Selig was being loaded into a nearby hearse. Supervising the effort, still in priest's cassock, stood Jack Sparks.

Right, then, thought Doyle, as his carriage drove away; no reason to fret over Stern's safety for the moment; if this skirmish turns out to be typical of the treatment I can expect from the average American crowd, it's my own skin I need to worry about.

When the two dozen members of the New York Police Department left the Elbe later that day after their exhaustive search of the ship for the last fugitive came up empty-handed, no one took undue notice of a tall, blond, good-looking officer in their midst, badge number 473. No one remembered speaking to him afterward, and most of them didn't even realize badge 473 was missing until three hours after they arrived back at the precinct house.

Three more days would pass before they found the naked body of the badge's original owner, a patrolman named O'Keefe, shoved into a burlap bag in the meat locker of the Elbe's kitchen.

DENVER, COLORADO

Who is that odd-looking old man? wondered Eileen. What a sight: funny round hat, floor-length fur-trimmed black coat, a ribbon around his waist, the strange formal cut of his collar and tie. Thin as a darning needle, hardly strength enough to lift that suitcase. But what a sweet smile he's got, talking to those Negro porters, lifting his hat to thank them. They've pointed him over this way; he must have been asking directions. Can't be easy to travel at his age, poor thing; your heart goes out to him. He looks so vulnerable and out of place, everybody staring at him. Doesn't seem to mind the attention, though. Doesn't even seem to be aware of it actually. He looks like someone ... who is it? Someone really familiar. God, that's it: Abraham Lincoln, although the beard's much longer, and his hair's gone to gray. But he has the eyes, those same sad puppy-dog eyes.

"Will wonders never cease?" said Bendigo Rymer, giving her a nudge and a big nod in the direction of the approaching man. "A Hebrew in the middle of the Denver train station."

"He looks nice," said Eileen, as she finished rolling a cigarette and struck a match off the bottom of the hard wooden bench. "He looks like Abraham Lincoln."

"By my stars," said Rymer. "He does at that. Imagine: Lincoln as Shylock. What a monumental miscasting."

The man reached the section where the Penultimate Players were stretched out with their luggage, set down his suitcase with a sigh, and pulled out a long white handkerchief to mop the sweat from his forehead. The rest of the Players, those few who weren't doing penance for their excesses of the previous evening, lay on their benches and stared at this exotic creature with the idle curiosity of jaded sophisticates. The man looked around, absorbed their diffident attention, and smiled pleasantly.

Tired, yes, but in good humor. A generous face, thought Eileen, as she smiled back at him.

"There is a rumor going around," said the man, gasping to catch his breath, "that this could be the area to catch the train for Phoenix, Arizona."

"Indeed, sir, you are well informed," said Rymer. "We are bound there ourselves, a poor company of players, but the best actors in the West, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited."

"Laying it on a bit thick," said Eileen sideways to him as she smiled.

"To hear the words of the great Shakespeare spoken in such an unexpected place, and with such obvious skill, is not only a pleasure to the ears but a comfort to the mind," said the man.

Rymer grinned like an idiot and blushed beet-red; compliments of any sort completely leveled him. You half expected him to roll over so the man could scratch his belly.

"Why don't you sit down, mister?" said Eileen.

"Most kind, thank you," said the man, settling onto a bench directly across from her.

"My name is Bendigo Rymer, sir, and you are most welcome to join our assembly. We are the Penultimate Players, sir; having just completed, if I do say so, a more than modestly successful engagement in this thriving metropolis, you do find us en route to the city of Phoenix, carrying culture to the desert like water to the gardens of Babylon."

"That's nice," said the man. He smiled at Eileen, a twinkle in his eye just short of a wink.

There's wisdom in this man's eyes, thought Eileen, and his actions; instant recognition of what an irredeemable jackass Rymer is and kindness enough not to take offense. She hadn't seen a face this full of honest-to-goodness humanity since she left New York.

"And what clarion call beckons you, sir, to the land of the sagebrush and the redskin?"

"Nothing nearly so glamorous as. you people, I'm afraid," said the man. "Just a little business."

"Ah, business," said Rymer, as if it were a secret password. "The wheels of commerce, ever turning."

"My name's Eileen; what's yours?"

"Jacob. Jacob Stern."

"Are you a diamond merchant, Mr. Stern, or perhaps a dealer in furs or exotic metals?" asked Rymer, falling back on his exhaustive inventory of cultural stereotypes.

"I'm a rabbi."

"I should have known it; a man of the cloth, come to shepherd his flock. You have that look about you; that self-forgetful devotion to the life of the spirit. Splendid. I wasn't even aware that there was an Israelite temple in Phoenix."

"Neither was I," said Stern.

"Imagine that, Eileen; one of the Twelve Lost Tribes returning to the desert," said Rymer. "History is being written all around us, if only our eyes were not too poor to see."

Eileen cringed; she was already formulating an excuse for abandoning Rymer in order to sit next to Stern on the train.

If my dreams are any indication, Mr. Bendigo Rymer, you have blundered a lot closer to the truth than you could imagine, thought Jacob. He shifted his weight, trying to find comfort for his bony hips on the bare wooden bench. His back pulsed with pain, his knees ached as if they'd been hammered by a blacksmith, his lungs burned, his ears rang, he was hungry, thirsty, and he needed to empty his bladder.

I'm a wreck. Thanks to God: What an invaluable reminder that we are spiritual beings and if we dwell on the physical, our only reward will be pain. On the other hand, if a hot bath and a bowl of soup were to materialize before me now, I wouldn't complain.

Maybe he could sleep on the train. The same dream had come into his mind with greater intensity the farther south he traveled, additional details of its peculiar landscape coming clearer with each immersion. Throughout the trip from Chicago, Jacob had physically willed himself to stay asleep—not just for the rest, although he felt no less exhausted for it—but so that more of the dream might be revealed.

Consistently now, he experienced while sleeping the unsettling sensation of full waking consciousness, completely aware that he was moving through a dream. Although unable to control the dream's flow of events, he had learned to shift the focus of his attention and see more of what was happening around him. The explicit content of the dream itself was not on the face of it so frightening, but there crept in around its borders an aura of menace and a potency of light and sound and color so overwhelming that each night he had woken out of it in a pool of sweat, heart thundering, eyes raw and stinging from involuntary tears.

The Lost Tribe.

In the dream, he came upon a tribe of people—in the logic of the dream that seemed to be their essence—gathering in an open plaza, all in white, worshiping something mounted on an elevated platform that gave off a tremendous amount of light... but each time the object of their veneration remained frustratingly just out of his sight.

Other now familiar images:

An immense black tower casting shadows over waves of white sand. An underground chamber, a crypt or temple carved out of rock. Five other people, faces and forms obscured. An ancient leather-bound book lying in a silver casket. The book in Hebrew. Reaching toward its pristine pages, a hand: talons, scales.

The phrase in his head.

We are Six.

For now that was all he had to go on.

Jacob had no plan. His body felt frail, his skin hardly durable enough to hold every ailing part of him together, but his mind remained clear and his strength of purpose had grown more resolute with every passing mile. Why Phoenix? What was guiding him in that direction? Pure instinct: The dream took place in a desert so he kept moving toward the biggest one anyone seemed to know about—western Arizona, they told him—and he would continue on until he came across something that conformed to his vision. Then... who knew? Undoubtedly something else would happen. Or perhaps not. Maybe he would have a nice vacation and the desert air would do wonders for his lungs.

"... we played an entire week in Minneapolis, in front of packed houses, every night; they appreciate fine theater in that town, a hearty Scandinavian people, used to sitting for long periods of time—it's the winters, you see, the long winters pacify 'em—that has been my experience many times over, a most patient and receptive audience...."

With Rymer lost in his self-absorbed monologue, Jacob was able to rest and feel his heart settle into rhythm again. He was forced to admit that, for a man in such miserable condition, he felt surprisingly good. After fifty years cooped up with his books, to travel around in such a spontaneous, unrestricted way felt like a revelation; eating sandwiches, watching the spectacular American countryside roll by outside the windows of the train. How exhilarating! Fields and rivers, evergreen forests, the sunset-red Rocky Mountains in the high distance; he'd never been near such exquisite natural beauty before. The world seemed so huge, expansive, and made all his attempts to philosophically encompass it seem laughingly inadequate. A sense of humiliating foolishness about his journey came over him, but he had regularly suffered the same feelings while standing on a street corner or walking to the butcher. Generalized shame is an inescapable part of the human condition, he reminded himself. May as well keep moving forward.

And if the whole mishmash turned out to be born from some crazy defect in his mind, with no horrific calamity awaiting him at the end of the trail, why then, that qualified as good news, didn't it? This spur of the moment train trip to the Wild West would simply pass into the mythology of his circle of friends as the most celebrated example of Jacob Stern's already well-certified eccentricity.

He was certain of only this: Within the hour, the conductor would whistle them onto the train to Phoenix. The actor would continue to talk about himself, unprovoked, until their train arrived or the world ended, whichever came first. And to pass the time until then in the company of such a beautiful woman as this one across from him was not such a terrible fate.

Maybe she would sit next to him. He could think of worse things.

"Deerstalker hats have become all the rage."

"You don't say."

"I'm told there's even been a run on magnifying glasses and meerschaum pipes."

"Honestly? Well, I never."

"I attended a costume party at the Vanderbilt mansion some few weeks ago and I would hazard to say that no less than every third man there came dressed as Mr. Sherlock Holmes,'' said Major Pepperman, sipping the hotel's complimentary champagne and idly tinkling on the grand piano that sat before the picture window looking down on Fifth Avenue, its lights twinkling to life as night settled slowly over the city.

"How extraordinary," said Doyle.

How mind-numbingly terrifying, he thought.

Seated snugly in the sitting room of his suite at the Waldorf Hotel—a room considerably larger than every entire flat he had ever lived in until recently—Doyle picked grapes from a courtesy fruit sculpture the size of Rodin's Balzac while paging through a stack of the daily tabloids; in all but one of the rags his arrival had rated front-page news. But no stories in the Herald under the byline of Ira Pinkus, or in any of the other papers under his various noms de plume, and nothing within the existing write-ups referred remotely to any nefarious events on board the Elbe. Whatever pressures Jack had applied to Pinkus had silenced his bark, realized Doyle, allowing himself a private sigh of relief.

"Perhaps that strange fellow we met in the lobby had been at your party as well," said Doyle.

A frumpy pear-shaped man in full Holmes regalia and two equally suspect accomplices had staked out the Waldorf entrance, jumping into Doyle's path as they arrived: "Conan Doyle, we presume?" Then, with stone-faced ceremony, they handed him an engraved plaque—commemorating mr. Arthur conan doyle's first american visit, courtesy of the official new york chapter of the baker street irregulars—an organization Doyle had never heard of, which according to Pepperman had spontaneously sprouted out of Sherlock mania like a wild toadstool.

This Holmes impersonator then insisted on delivering a rambling, poorly memorized soliloquy in the most wretched simulation of an English accent Doyle could remember hearing, presumably, although it was difficult to tell, as the character of Holmes paying tribute to his creator. This paralyzing assault went on for nearly five minutes, during which time the smile pasted on Doyle's face began to cramp painfully. In the awkward aftermath, it took all Doyle and Pepperman could do to dissuade the sorry trio from following them into the elevator.

An awful thought struck Doyle: What if Jack were to materialize in the middle of such a scene?

"So ... tell me, is he really dead?"

"Who?"

"Why, Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"Oh, good God, man, he fell a thousand feet into a waterfall."

"There's one school of thought thinks he might have found some way to survive."

"I can't believe people are honestly walking around thinking about such things."

"As I tried to communicate to you in my cables, Mr. Doyle, you have no idea the powerful impression your stories have made on readers over here," said Pepperman. "A continuing series of mysteries featuring the same characters is just so plumb bob audacious, it's a plain wonder no one ever dreamt it up before. Honestly, sir, I've never seen the like; I used to promote a traveling circus so I've got a sense of the way things catch on, the common touch, how folks want to spend their hard-earned buck. I don't believe you can as yet fully appreciate what Sherlock means to these people."

Doyle smiled absently, feeling it would be impolite to ask but hoping Pepperman would leave soon so he could unpack. He reached for and opened another package off the Matterhorn of ornately wrapped gifts that they'd found piled inside the suite.

A lurid red satin pillow needlepointed with the inscription though he might be more humble, there is no police like holmes.

"I'm beginning to get a grasp of it," said Doyle, heart sinking as he realized he was now obliged to favor each gift-giver with a reply as etiquette required.

With his obsessive devotion to order, he could already visualize the assembling of the cards and addresses, the infinite tedium of personalizing each and every thank-you—good Christ, it could take weeks. This trip was supposed to be a break from all that, a lark, an excursion. If Larry was along, they might have managed it, but Innes would only make royal hash of a job this logistically complex. And now that he had caught the scent of that herd of dancing girls, the boy would be absolutely unfit for duty. Where had he gotten himself off to now, for example? Doyle hadn't seen him since they checked into the—

"I don't recall if I mentioned it to you, but Grover Cleveland has on more than one occasion stayed in this very same suite," said Pepperman.

"Grover who?"

"Grover Cleveland. The President."

"Of? Oh, the president of your country."

"Yes, sir. Right here in the Presidential Suite. On more than one occasion."

All three-hundred-plus pounds of him—oh dear, thought Doyle, perhaps I'd better check to see if the bed's broken. He caught a glimpse of the eager-beaver expression on Pepper-man's face and chided himself: Here I am prattling on about my petty ordeals, wondering why the man won't leave, and the poor fellow's only waiting to hear how terribly pleased I am at all the fuss he's made.

"You know, Major, I am so truly grateful beyond my ability to express to you for all the effort you've made on my behalf," said Doyle.

"Really?" Pepperman's face lit up like a full moon.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate everything you've done; I couldn't be more certain that our tour will be the greatest success for us both, financially, artistically, and in every other way imaginable."

"Why I'm most pleased to hear you say so, sir," said Pepperman, rising and shaking his hand, flashing his blinding teeth again. "Most pleased. Now I should leave you to get yourself more settled in. ..."

"Oh no, it's quite all right—"

"No, now I'm sure you could use an hour or two of peace and quiet; we'll be setting quite a pace while you're here, it may be the last chance you have for quite some time."

"Perhaps you're right...."

"So if it's convenient, sir, I will call for you at eight with the carriage and we'll go straightaway to your publisher's reception."

With that, the good-natured giant took his leave and Doyle embarked on an exploratory tour of the three-bedroom Presidential Suite, calculating the staggering cost of the place; Italian marble floors and mantels, Persian rags the size of a cricket pitch, immense Egyptian urns, and paintings of Dutch landscapes with enough spread of canvas to sail an easterly wind halfway back to Britain. The force of water pressure exerted by the overhead shower in the bathroom he found astonishing, if not physically dangerous. He had just finished verifying that the bed had survived the challenge of President Cleveland's amplitude when a knock summoned him to the front door, which in the immensity of the place took an anxious minute to find.

No one there. He walked back into the sitting room.

"Sorry," someone said, as Doyle jumped half a foot.

Jack Sparks stood by the piano near the window. Father Devine's priest's garb had been abandoned, along with the thinning red hair, whiskers, and paunch. Doyle had nearly forgotten the man's genius for disguise and with a jolt remembered he had given that same chameleon talent to his detective; here he was, face-to-face with Sherlock's inspiration.

He looks roughly the same; a decade older, of course—so are we all, thought Doyle, but the mind manufactures an allowance for the erosions of time, keeping pace with the subtle changes one never notices in that face we study in the mirror. He still wore black—neutral, ascetic trousers and shirt—a leather coat, and the same soft leather boots. His hair shorter, clipped closer to the skull, going to gray. The scars Doyle had seen earlier on Father Devine had not been the work of makeup; a stark band of white along the left jaw, an indentation on the forehead running just below the hairline. As if he'd been fractured and reassembled, thought Doyle, dimming his charismatic handsomeness; something harder and more forbidding emerging from his interior.

His eyes had changed most of all, and yet they were the first thing about him Doyle had recognized; he remembered seeing in them this same haunted, spiritually disrupted look during their most troubled times together: Now it seemed a constant presence, deeper set, withdrawing from life. Impossible not to notice eyes like those and be disturbed by them.

A cruel irony, thought Doyle; here I am, an honored guest in this palatial suite, celebrated beyond all reasonable proportion for the exploits of a fictional character, and here its principal inspiration stands before me, a sorrowful, reduced shadow of the man I had known. Over the years, Doyle had wondered hundreds of times how it would feel to see his friend again. The one emotion he had never anticipated was the one he felt now.

Fear.

Perfectly natural. I thought he was long dead; it's a bit like encountering a ghost, isn't it?

Jack made no move toward him, offered no hand in greeting. Nothing warm or welcoming in his look or manner, only a dull glare of rectitude and regret.

"The reason why no approach was made to you on the ship," said Sparks, his voice flat, deflated.

"You knew I was there from the day we sailed, why didn't you?..."

"Didn't want to involve you."

"It wouldn't have troubled me...."

"Not your affair. Wasn't aware you were going to be there. Taken aback. Stern or his book either, for that matter. Couldn't be helped."

"I'll take you at your word." Why was he so cold?

"Suspected those four men were on board. Suspected they were involved in the other business."

"The theft from Oxford; the Vulgate Bible."

Sparks kept his hands folded behind his back, offering no nods or shrugs, a complete economy of movement and gesture, with no concession to the comfort of the other.

"Sorry to see you there," said Sparks.

"No reason to be . . ."

"Caused enough trouble in your life."

"Nonsense, I would have been happy to know you were alive...."

Jack shook his head once, with emphatic vehemence.

"I'm not."

Doyle's heart tripped. Sparks wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Not in the way you suppose when you say it. Not in the way you assume."

"Of course I had no way of knowing that, did I?" said Doyle.

"That woman. On the ship."

"The medium? Sophie Hills?"

"You asked her about me."

"She said that you weren't dead."

"She was wrong. I did die. I stayed in this body and I died."

"But Jack; you are alive, the fact remains you're standing here...."

' 'Life ... does not mean ... the same thing ... it does to you. There is no way ... this can be described.. . that would make you understand. Not any way ... that would have made you .. . happy."

Jack spoke like an automaton, face drained of expression; unreachable. Spitting out the last word like a bitter seed. He was right about this much: He didn't seem human. And using the skills Jack had taught him to now analyze the man himself made Doyle feel vaguely treacherous.

A long silence. Jack turned away, looked out the window. Doyle's skin crawled, palms moist. But he waited for Jack to elaborate. You'll find I'm not the same man either now, old boy; I don't intimidate so easily.

"Didn't want you to see me like this," Jack said finally.

Was there a trace of shame in his voice? For the first time, Doyle noticed Jack's hands folded behind his back; they were scored with angry red and white scars, fingers crooked, mangled. The fourth and fifth fingers of the left hand were missing. What had happened to him?

"Larry told me about it," said Doyle. "Found me in London. Nearly ten years ago now. How the two of you followed your brother's trail to Austria. Finding Alexander at the waterfall. Your fight. How you fell."

"Yes. I read your story," said Jack dryly, staring down at the city.

"And I'll make no apologies for writing about a man I thought long dead," said Doyle, his back bristling; then, softening his tone: "I went there, years afterward. With my wife: I'm married now. To Reichenbach Falls. I didn't see how anyone could have survived but someone said it had happened before. It was possible. But I never heard from you. ..."

Doyle trailed off; no response.

"The Queen sent for me," Doyle went on. "Months after our business with the Seven. An audience with Victoria herself: There I was, twenty-five years old, chatting with the Queen. She confirmed what you'd told me was true, that you'd been working for her all along. She never mentioned anything to suggest you might have survived...."

Why was he telling him what he must already know? Doyle realized he felt a compelling need to fill this gulf of silence between them with words and somehow bridge it, to find a way back to knowing him.

"She calls on me from time to time. Asks my opinion on one thing or another—I've never told anyone of our arrangement, at her request. But I continue to make myself available. Least I could do."

Sparks kept his back to Doyle, offering no reaction.

"And Larry works for me; five years now. Soon as I made my way in the world, I sent for him. He's a splendid secretary. Indispensable to me; you'd be proud of him, Jack. He owes it all to you, leaving that criminal life behind. I know how much he'd love to see you."

Jack shook his head, dismissing the possibility. Doyle had to rein back his anger again.

"But you're obviously still working for the Crown," asked Doyle.

Finally he spoke, slowly, almost disembodied: "Three years ago ... found myself outside the British embassy in Washington. Been in America for ... a while. Had them send a cable; coded message only I could have sent. Made its way through channels to ... the highest level. Response came back: Give this man whatever he needs. Stared at me like some new species pulled from the bottom of the sea."

Why was he so frigid and ungiving? With all his observational acuity brought to bear, Doyle could not penetrate the man's veil of silence. Perhaps a more emotionally straightforward approach.

"You've never been far from my mind, Jack. After what Larry told me, I thought you were lost to us. You never knew how much you meant to me, how my life changed for the better from knowing you. If there was some small chance you'd survived, I thought surely you would have found a way to let me know. ..."

"You would never have known," said Sparks sharply. "Not from me."

"Why?"

"This was circumstance. Unfortunate but unavoidable. Better you'd never seen me again."

"Why, Jack?"

Sparks turned to him, angry, the glassy scars on his face stark against his pale skin.

"I am not the man you knew. Put him out of your mind. Don't speak of him to me again."

"I must know what's happened to you...."

"Put a headstone over that memory. Move on. If you can't, there is no way for us to proceed: I'll leave and you will never see me again."

Doyle struggled to contain his frustration. "If there's no other way."

Sparks nodded again, satisfied for the moment. "Saw you on the ship, hoped you wouldn't get involved; still a chance you could avoid it...."

"Why should I now when I didn't before?"

"You are a man of position and reputation now. You have a place in this world. A family. More for you to lose."

"Involved in what exactly? And how would anyone find out about what part I've played in this?"

"The fourth man escaped the ship when we reached port...."

"That seems unlikely...."

"No one found him."

"Perhaps he threw himself overboard like the other one."

"He was the last one left alive; his primary responsibility would have been to survive—"

"And report back to whoever hired them."

Jack nodded. "This fourth man will tell them of your involvement."

Doyle's anger flared again. "So you suggest I'm now in danger."

"Greater than you imagine ..."

"Then for God's sake, stop talking in riddles and answer me plainly: I've had as much of this as I can swallow—I nearly lost my life a dozen times following your lead ten years ago, I'm under no obligation to prove myself to you again. You turn up out of nowhere like Marley's ghost with your secrets and mysterious connections and never a word in the last ten years, and you're right, Jack, I have gotten somewhere in the world, and I've a lot less patience for half-truths and pointed evasions, particularly where my personal safety is at stake. You can be blunt about what you're on about here or be damned as far as I'm concerned."

The silence hung heavy between them. Neither man gave an inch.

"So when you say 'they,' " said Doyle, "who exactly do you mean?"

Sparks stared at him, unblinking, seemingly unmoved, but after making a decision behind his impassive gaze, he took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Doyle.

A lithograph of a woven coat of arms, an interrupted black circle on a field of white, three jagged red lines darting through the circle like lightning bolts.

"I've seen this design before," said Doyle, as he took out the sketch he'd been carrying in his pocket and gave it to Sparks. "Scrawled on the baseboard of Selig's cabin wall. I believe he saw it on the arm of one of his assassins—a scar or tattoo—and wrote it himself just before he died."

"Do you know what it signifies?"

"Haven't the faintest. Do you?"

"For centuries something similar to this served as the official seal of the Hanseatic League."

Doyle rummaged through his schoolboy memories: "The Hanseatic League was an alliance of German merchants. Medieval. Formed for protection of their cities and trade rights in the absence of a central government."

"Their influence eventually spread to every court in Europe. They raised a mercenary army, fought wars to assert their authority. The city of Lubeck, now in Germany, was the seat of their power, which reached its peak in the fourteenth century when they were as strong a force as any sovereignty."

"But they were finally defeated."

"By 1700 the League had all but disappeared, although Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen even today are still referred to as Hanseatic cities."

"Why would their seal turn up in the middle of this business?"

"There have for the last two hundred years been persistent rumors that the League did not die out with the consolidation of Germany as originally believed. That a form of the League survived as a secret society, with its resources and objectives intact."

"Who would have been responsible for that?"

"The merchants themselves initially. After the League dissolved, they still needed to protect their ships and caravans so they formed a militia, a private police force. And lacking the skilled men required for that work, they began to recruit criminals and thieves from port cities around the world, training those members rigorously, making them expert in arms, munitions, killing techniques.

"Through the years, this rogue branch began to prey on its employers and finally seized outright control of the organization. This renegade form of the League has survived to this day, headquartered in Eastern Europe."

"An international guild of thieves," said Doyle.

"Smuggling. Pirating. Trafficking in contraband. Stealing for themselves or as commissioned."

"And you suspected them in the theft of the Vulgate from Oxford prior to our sailing."

"Yes."

"And you think the same men, or elements of that organization, are after the Book of Zohar as well."

"Yes."

"But as to the question of who they might be working for or why ..."

Jack shook his head.

"Someone in America," said Doyle.

"Yes."

"The Vulgate Bible would have been transported here as well. On an earlier ship."

"Correct."

"But we don't know where."

Jack shook his head.

Doyle felt a satisfying and familiar meshing of the gears of their thought. This felt more like the old Sparks, the two of them alternatively sprinting ahead of each other on a chase for buried truth.

"Then we must trace these thieves back to whoever commissioned the crime," said Doyle.

Sparks raised an eyebrow. "How would you do it?"

"Let them steal the Book of Zohar—or think they have— and follow them."

The slightest smile appeared at the edge of Sparks's mouth. "Yes."

"You'll need the full cooperation of Lionel Stern—"

"I have it."

"You'll have mine as well."

"No. You're here on business. Couldn't expect you to—"

"Jack. You know me better than that."

They looked at each other:

And I know you better than you think I do, my friend, thought Doyle. I'll go along with this if only to get to the bottom of what's happened to you.

"We'll start tonight, then," said Sparks, moving toward the door.

"I have an obligation."

"Afterward..."

"Where shall we meet?"

"I'll come for you."

Sparks left the room, silent as a cat.

BETWEEN DENVER AND PHOENIX

"In Hebrew Kabbalah means 'to receive,' as in the receiving of wisdom.... I don't wish to burden you, are you sure you want me to explain all this?'' asked Jacob Stern.

"Absolutely," said Eileen. "I'm fascinated."

"Well, it's a long train ride. In Kabbalah it is written that God created the world along thirty-two paths of secret knowledge; these are represented by the numbers one through ten and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each number has a secret spiritual meaning that corresponds to one of the ten power centers in the physical body. Each one of the twenty-two letters has a numerical value and a visual significance in the way it is drawn, in addition to its sound that forms language. Each of these different paths to knowledge is of equal importance in deciphering the mystery that lies behind creation. Do you follow?"

"I think so," said Eileen without much assurance but encouraged to try by the man's soft, infectious happiness.

"The student of Kabbalah uses the sound of certain powerful words in meditation to create a higher consciousness in himself; the numerical significance of its letters is analyzed according to numerological values which reveal hidden meanings; the shape of the letters provides a basis for studying visually coded information, like the mandalas of the Hindu. Each discipline exercises a different area of the mind but all are equally valid ways for the aspiring student to move closer to enlightenment."

Night was falling rapidly outside the windows of their moving train; the lights of Denver fading behind them as they snaked through the sparsely settled foothills to the south. Even in the dwindling twilight, one could sense the ponderous weight of the Rockies lying to the west; Eileen wasn't sure which seemed more dense and impenetrable, those mountains or the response she'd gotten from Jacob Stern to her simple query: What is it you do, exactly?

"There are only two qualities of reality that we as human beings can experience: One is physical matter, the other is information." Stern held up a bright green apple. "There are the atoms or particles that make up the form of an object: matter. There is the idea of the object that exists only in our minds: information. One has no meaning without the other but the combination of these two qualities is life. An apple, for instance." He took a big bite and chewed vigorously, smiling. "Would you care for one?"

"Thank you," said Eileen, taking the apple he offered from his bag.

"They are called Granny Smiths; isn't that fantastic? What an image; this wiry old grandmother running around the orchard."

Eileen laughed; he could go on talking about anything he liked as long as he made her laugh.

"It is the same with these old books I study," he said, pulling a leatherbound volume out of his valise. "To a person who has no experience of them they are nothing but funny symbols printed on pages bound together and wrapped in a cover. A primitive could make no sense of this object!"

"Neatly summing up how I felt about schoolbook Latin," said Eileen.

"Of course; because they couldn't convince you of its relevance to your fifteen-year-old existence. But to a scholar whose whole life has been spent preparing, or even better to a prophet whose mind is not clouded by the influence of the physical or animal soul..."

At which point Bendigo Rymer, who had been straining to eavesdrop from the seat in front of them—outraged that Eileen had abandoned him for this interloper—fell into a heavy, untroubled sleep.

".. .a great holy book is not just a document for the study of God or even an instrument for the communication of the will of God. It is in itself the divine body of God, embodied in a form which allows the person who studies it to penetrate and merge with the book, and in this way enter the secret heart of our Creator."

"You're saying these books are somehow alive," said Eileen.

"In a way, yes. This is complicated. Are you familiar with how a telephone works, my dear?"

"Not exactly."

"Neither am I. But as I understand it, there is a mysterious substance in the little part that you hold and speak into...."

"The mouthpiece."

"Thank you; a substance that when we speak into this mouthpiece vibrates and turns our words into an electrical signal which runs along the wires to the other person—don't ask me how—where there is more of this magical substance in the part they listen to—the earpiece, yes?—that also vibrates and turns these signals back into the words we spoke over here so they can understand them. Isn't that fantastic?"

Three feet away, Bendigo Rymer began to snore, a foghorn cutting through the clacking of the train.

"So holy books are like this substance."

"Yes. The word of God has been received by them on their pages, translated into words and numbers and sounds so that someone who approaches with the proper education can eventually decipher and understand. God speaks in one end; we listen on the other."

"If that's the case," asked Eileen, taking another bite of apple, "why isn't everybody in on the mystery?"

"Not everyone is ready. A person must achieve a high degree of purity before studying this material or the power of the information would rip them apart like a hurricane. There is a saying: The vessel must be made strong for the passing down of wisdom."

With a thud, the silver flask he'd been sipping from slipped from the sleeping Rymer's seat to the floor at Stern's feet. Eileen tucked the flask back under Bendigo's arm, grateful that she hadn't been drinking tonight; she'd indulged altogether too much recently, comfort in place of company, and it was time she tapered off. She rested her head against the seat, more relaxed than she could remember, tranquilized by the gentle rocking of the train and the steady sound of Jacob's voice.

"This has traditionally been the role of the priesthood, in every religion: to help men and women prepare for the receiving of spiritual information from the higher realms."

"All my priest ever did for me was try and stick his hand up my skirt," said Eileen, instantly regretting it.

"Well, that is the great challenge of living, isn't it?" said Jacob, not at all embarrassed. "Humans are divided beings attempting to reconcile our two natures: the spiritual and the animal. That's why I wear this ribbon around my waist, by the way; it is called a gartel, symbolically it separates the higher and lower parts of our nature and serves as a constant reminder to me of our ongoing struggle. We are all, in our own way, trying to make this tikkun, this healing or repair inside, to reconcile our divided selves. Every individual is responsible for making the tikkun in his own life; it is the primary responsibility of living. They say if enough people are able to do this work, one day such a healing may come for the entire world."

"Think the world's fallen from grace, do you? We're all hopeless sinners and the like."

"You are English, are you not?"

"Dear me, is it still so obvious?"

"Only in a most delightful way. But let me ask you: Is there any doubt in your Church of England that man is a completely wicked, sinful wretch?"

"Of the worst sort. And my experience with men bears that out."

Jacob laughed. "This is the feeling most people have about their life, you know. That they have failed their God, or themselves, in some fundamental way."

"Is that what you feel, Mr. Stern?"

Stern looked at her, his blue eyes as bright as shiny buttons, joy radiating from him as steadily as heat from a coal fire. What an attractive younger man he must have been, thought Eileen, instantly deciding how wonderful her life would be now if she had met him then.

"There is no question," said Stern, "that we human beings are sad and broken creatures. Look around; it requires no great vision to see that things are not as they should be. If there was perfection in the world, why would man and woman be separate beings, for instance? Why are there differences of color or religion, country or family that cause such blind hatred and bloodshed? The most unimaginable cruelties seem never to fall outside the capabilities of man."

"Yes. It's all quite hopeless, isn't it?" she said, staring dreamily into his eyes.

"They say that in every creation the creator reveals his personality; if so then the Creator of this world must Himself be a terribly wounded and incomplete being. In this way, perhaps we do resemble our God. And if there is such a God, surely he must be in exile with us, suffering as we do, struggling on his own path toward spiritual perfection. The path we are all stumbling along. The history of humanity tells us there is an undeniable progression in spite of all our violence and pain, a slow, gradual moving toward the light—in Hebrew 'light' has the same numerological value as 'mystery.' Perhaps one day we will all achieve this 'enlightenment.' "

Eileen tried to disguise a yawn. Jacob smiled.

"One of the great disadvantages of growing old; you think you know so much but nobody else has the endurance to listen to you."

"No, it's quite interesting, really," said Eileen. "I just haven't had any reason to think about such things for the longest time."

"Who does? Only crazy old men locked in their basements with a thousand books. Real life, families, making a living; who has time to worry about suffering when suffering takes up so much time?" said Stern, laughing.

"You really are the most wonderfully peculiar man," said Eileen.

"This is a compliment?"

"I mean it to be. Different. Unusual. Out of the ordinary."

"Some of my most outstanding qualities," said Stern, laughing again.

"Well, I approve of them, Mr. Stern. You're a fine old fellow."

Stern took a satisfying breath and looked out the window, moonlight gleaming off the luminous snowcap of a distant peak. "It is a most amazing world, in any case," he said. "Such a shame we can't appreciate it more."

"I suppose you just have to take advantage of those moments when they come your way," said Eileen, a delicious sleepiness creeping into her.

A dreamy look came over Stern, transparent and fine; he looked years younger suddenly. "Nothing is lost. Nothing's destroyed. There are no divisions. No disharmony. Everything returns."

No, this isn't possible, thought Eileen, a familiar stirring quickening her heart. Ridiculous. She hunted down the feeling, examined it, produced it, tested it; and then had to admit there was validity to it, however absurd.

She was falling in love with him.