Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

Little as he relished the idea of the helicopter ride back, in the dark, Palliser was even less inclined to stay the night under such a strange roof. There was something unsettling about Linz, quite apart from the fact that he had provided so little help. All through the dinner, Palliser had increasingly felt as if he was being drained of all his own information, and for nothing in return. He wasn’t used to being duped, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Thank you,” he said, “but I have an appointment first thing in the morning.”

Linz acceded graciously, rising from his chair. That left arm was definitely palsied, Palliser noticed. But then, to his own great embarrassment, he found himself weaving on his own feet from the effects of the wine. Rocking in place for a second, he said, “Your wine cellar is exceptionally well stocked.”

“It’s the best in the Loire Valley,” Linz said. “In fact, you have been such good company, I’d like to offer you a gift-a bottle of whatever you like.”

Palliser demurred, but Linz would have none of it. “Emil,” he commanded, “tell the pilot to be ready in ten minutes.” And then, taking Palliser by the elbow, he escorted him out of the room while Ava called for a second helping of the torte.

Palliser, holding his briefcase, was led back through the armor hall and the salons, then down a winding stair and through the kitchens and scullery. The temperature grew colder and the air grew damp. Linz circumvented an old dusty rack and flicked a switch. A long corridor, carved from the stone itself, was lined with thousands of bottles of wine, as far as the eye could see. Palliser, who had seen the vaunted storerooms of Moldova, could not even guess at the quantity housed here.

“What do you like?” Linz asked, leading the way under a string of dim white lightbulbs. “Bordeaux? Pinot Noir?” He waved an arm at the racks, moving on. “This valley is best known for its dry white wines. Did you enjoy the Sancerre at dinner?”

“I did,” Palliser confessed, wishing that he had enjoyed it a little less.

“Then let me offer you one of these,” Linz said, stepping farther down the tunnel and taking a bottle from the rack. Blowing off the dust, he said, “Yes, this is a 1936-a very fine vintage.”

As Palliser took the bottle, he became aware of a draft under his feet, and the distant sound of sloshing water. He looked down, and in the wavering light saw that he was standing atop a rusty grate.

“This was once a dungeon,” Linz explained. “You’re standing above the oubliette.”

The shaft, Palliser knew, where prisoners were thrown to die a slow death of thirst and starvation.

Instinctively, he stepped back.

“But the chateau rests on limestone, and the river is eroding the cliffs,” Linz said, stooping to pull the grate away to reveal the shaft; he appeared rather proud of his oubliette. “You see? The water has already reached the bottom of the pit.”

Indeed, Palliser could just make out a surge of water swirling at the very bottom of the funnel, when he felt a steadying hand on his shoulder and turned to see that Rigaud had rejoined them.

“The chopper is ready to go,” he said, Palliser’s cashmere overcoat draped over one arm.

“Good,” Palliser replied, “thank you.”

“Let me take those for you,” Linz said, relieving Palliser of the wine and the briefcase before he could think to object.

Then, as Rigaud held up the coat, Palliser turned and slipped his arms into the sleeves. He felt warmer already. But as he reached down to button it, Linz patted him on the shoulder, much harder than he thought necessary, and he was thrown off-balance. Before he could quite regain his footing, Rigaud had crouched down and was lifting him by the cuffs of his trousers.

“Stop! What the-”

But he was already upside down, his hands scrabbling at the edges of the oubliette. He tried to brace himself, but the stone was slick and his fingers kept sliding off into space.

“Let go!” he shouted, trying desperately to kick free, even as the coins and keys from his pants and jacket rained onto the stone, and the glasses slipped off his nose. The Mont Blanc pen dropped from his breast pocket, spinning into the black void. One hand was still firmly planted on the stone, but Linz put out a foot and nudged it aside.

An instant later Palliser was falling headfirst, caroming off the edges of the narrow shaft, shredding his clothes and ripping his skin, until he plunged, screaming, into the black water at the bottom of the pit.

Linz waited a moment, listening to the gurgle of the water, then brushed his hands against his jacket and replaced the 1936 Sancerre on the shelf. He nodded at the grate, and Rigaud bent down and pushed it back into place.

On the way out, Linz flicked off the lights and went upstairs to his bedroom. Ava was in the bathroom, removing her makeup. After getting undressed, he put on his pajamas and red silk robe, and began leafing through the pages from the late Mr. Palliser’s briefcase. So far, they looked very similar to papers he’d seen before, more’s the pity. They could join all the other sketches and journal entries and ricordanze, carried by previous, and equally unsuccessful, emissaries. Sometimes he wondered what he would do for amusement if these detectives and so-called art experts ever stopped coming.

“Who was that bore at the dinner table?” Ava called from the bathroom.

“Nobody.”

“Will he be coming back?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied, turning another page. Linz knew that behind them all, there lurked a rich and resourceful adversary-though nowhere near as rich and resourceful as he was-and while Rigaud had often advised him to cut the tree down at its roots, Linz resisted. A life like his held little enough to savor, and simply knowing that a nemesis existed gave him a special frisson of pleasure. He had always relished having enemies; he’d felt that their animosity directly fed his own power and invincibility.

And as for these futile attempts to recover La Medusa? He was the cat playing with the proverbial mouse.

Ava bounded back into the bed, nude as usual, and yanked the covers up to her neck.

“Tell me again why you won’t install central heating?”

“Tell me why you refuse to wear the nightgowns I buy you.”

“They’re not healthy-they constrict the limbs in sleep.”

It was a discussion they had had a thousand times.

“Heating ducts would destroy the integrity of the chateau walls,” Linz said. And he had always been terribly superstitious about any alterations to the Chateau Perdu.

She burrowed deeper, pulling the blanket up to her eyeballs. “You and your integrity,” she snorted.

Linz slipped the papers into the bedside drawer, right under the loaded pistol he always kept there, and turned out the lights. In the darkness, as he rolled onto his side, he fancied he could hear the cries of his dinner guest, echoing from the oubliette.

For David, Sunday night had always meant dinner at his sister Sarah’s house in the suburbs. And for years, he had looked forward to it.

But those simple, happy days were gone. For the past year or more, it had been an increasingly fraught occasion.

Sarah had been battling breast cancer, just as his mother had done, and like his mother, many years ago, she was losing the war. She had been through endless rounds of radiation and chemo, and even though she was only four years older than David, she looked like she was at death’s door. Her wavy brown hair, the same chestnut color as his own, was entirely gone, replaced with a wig that never sat quite right. Her eyebrows were penciled in, and her skin had a pale translucence.