Eric Lustbader - The Testament

"Listen," Bravo went on, "I'll be home in a couple of days. I want to get back to work."

"Non, you have more important matters to deal with."

A dam burst, and Bravo's eyes abruptly filled with tears. "My father dead, my sister blinded-this is a nightmare, Jordan."

"I know, mon ami. My heart goes out to you-Camille's, as well." Camille Muhlmann, Jordan's mother, was his advisor, and an integral part of Lusignan et Cie. "She wishes me to tell you that she's sick with grief."

"As always, she's exceptionally kind. Thank her for me," Bravo said.

"Take your time. Do whatever you have to do. In all things you have my support, whatever you need you have only to ask."

The woman laughed at something her lover said and glanced at Bravo. She had the face of a hungry cat.

"Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate… everything."

"Ah, no. I just wish I could do more."

The couple had stopped to chat with the cop, but the woman's eyes remained on Bravo. She smiled a secret catlike smile behind her lover's back.

"You scared the hell out of me, you know. You could've been jailed, and then where would I be?"

The lovers had moved on, but the woman's smile lingered in his mind.

"Now listen to me, mon ami, you must take your time winding up your father's affairs. We will manage without you. And, Bravo, remember, you must call on me if there's anything I can do. Here in Paris, so far away, I feel helpless. It will be better for both of us if I can help in some way."

He was outside the bank. "Merci, Jordan. Just talking to you… this connection. You know, I feel a whole lot better."

"Then I am happy. Bon, a biento^t, mon ami."

Putting away his cell phone, Bravo went through a glass door into the bank. As he crossed the marble floor he remembered his father taking him in here when he was eight, recalled with a startling vividness the confidence he felt with his hand clutching his father's. Dexter had opened up the account for him. When he'd turned eighteen, at his father's behest, he'd gotten the safety deposit box. Though he now lived a continent away, he'd never gotten rid of them. Their importance to him was immeasurable. Wherever he might be in the world, part of him always would remain here in New York.

At the rear of the bank, he asked to see the manager. Within moments, a middle-aged woman in a conservative business suit was escorting him downstairs to the vast vault where the safety deposit boxes rose in gleaming reinforced steel banks. The vault had about it the oppressive look and air of a mausoleum.

Inside, he sat in a curtained booth while she went to fetch the box. He knew he was lucky to have a friend like Jordan. They had met in Rome five years ago when Muhlmann had come to the university where Bravo was then working. Bravo had had a unique position in the department of medieval religions. He was not expected to teach but to research the ages-old mysteries that dogged his field. Though Bravo was then still in his twenties, he had already gained something of a reputation not only as a scholar but also as cryptanalyst. As it happened, that very field of knowledge fascinated Jordan, and he was eager to observe firsthand Bravo's facility in decoding medieval texts and solving seemingly unsolvable puzzles.

Jordan had stayed in Rome six weeks. During that time, he and Bravo had struck up a close friendship based on common interests and outlooks. They had studied together, run track and hit the heavy bag together, had even squared off in fencing matches-remarkably, their skills matched each other in the e'pe'e and the saber. They went out to dinners and got drunk on good food, excellent wine and fascinating talk. Finally, Jordan had made Bravo an offer to join Lusignan et Cie. Bravo at first declined, but Jordan had persisted and, eventually, after some further back and forth, he had managed to persuade Bravo to come work for him.

The manager returned with a long flat gray metal box and, setting it down on the table in front of him, left him. He took out the key and opened it. Inside, he discovered stacks of money, neatly wrapped and bound, his secret fuck-you money. Yet another thing Dexter Shaw had taught him. There were two layers, each double bundle bound together. He untied the lower left-hand corner bundle, pulled from between them the key his father had given him six months ago.

The meeting had been brief but unprecedented inasmuch as Dexter had flown into Paris, something Bravo couldn't recall him having done before. They hadn't even sat down but instead at Dexter's suggestion had crossed the Seine on the Pont d'Iena, walking briskly along the rather unlovely Quai de Grenelle. The morning was unnaturally warm for a normally raw and forbidding February, and people could be seen strolling happily with their winter coats open or slung over their arms. Once they passed the Hotel Nikko the tourists vanished and the natives dwindled, which was apparently the whole point of the exercise. That was when Dexter had handed him the key, an old-fashioned item, odd in both shape and design.

"If something happens to me," Dexter had said, "you'll need this."

"If what happens? Dad, what are you talking about?" Another dark and unfathomable secret, another bit of shrapnel lodged in his chest so close to his heart he could feel it flutter.

The sky was the color of peat. The overheated weather was causing mist to rise off the river, smudging the outlines of the buildings on the Right Bank. Halos throbbed around the moving lights. A horn hooted mournfully as a barge slid slowly past them. Down on the lower quai a dog was running loose, its tongue out and lolling. The leaves of the horse chestnut trees rustled, as if anxious.

"Just listen, Bravo. Put the key somewhere safe, will you promise me that? And if something happens, take the spare key I gave you and go to my apartment." Dexter Shaw had smiled, gripping his son's shoulder. "Don't look so stricken. Chances are it'll never come to that."

But now it had. Detective Splayne believed that the explosion had been caused by a gas leak, and that conclusion had been confirmed by the FDNY. Sitting here, staring at the key with the globular burr on the end, the seven incisions along its length, each in the shape of a star, Bravo couldn't help but ponder what had been on his mind from the first-what if both Splayne and the FDNY were wrong? Six months ago Dexter Shaw had traveled all the way to Paris, a place he despised, in order to deliver to his son the presentiment of his impending death. Steeped in the real and true mysteries of medieval religions, Bravo was not a believer in the occult. His father wasn't psychic-he'd known something, or at the very least had had a strong suspicion that his death was coming.

Shaking himself from the ominous web of his thoughts, Bravo pocketed the key, along with two packs of bills. Then he closed and locked the box and, emerging from the booth, handed it back to the patiently waiting manager.

Not for the first time, he considered the possibility that Dexter Shaw's job at the State Department was only a cover and that he was, in fact, a spy.

"I think he's yummy," said the young woman with the face of a hungry cat.

Rossi shook out a cigarette and lit up. "Donatella, you surprise me. You need to be more discriminating."

"Don't be jealous, darling." She ran her long fingers over his biceps. "I have no intention of leaving you for Braverman Shaw."

"But a one-night stand wouldn't be out of the question, hmm?"

When she reached for his black silk shirt, she used her nails so that he could feel her through the tissue-thin fabric as she drew them across his chest. "How nostalgic!" she murmured. "You remember our first meeting."

"How could I forget?" Rossi glanced past her to the bank's entrance.

They sat at a cafe diagonally across from the bank into which Bravo had vanished some ten minutes before. They had chosen a table situated slightly back from the window so that they could surveil the street without themselves being seen. Rossi and Donatella spoke perfect, unaccented English, but when no one else could hear they had fallen into the habit of communicating in the precise, almost formal version of the language used by all Romans.