Robin Cook - Seizure

“I don’t believe this!” Gaetano whispered to himself. “It’s so perfect!” His excitement was palpable. Daniel and Stephanie had walked around the edge of the pool and were now starting off into the extensive, dark, and deserted formal gardens. In the darkness, Gaetano couldn’t see many of the details beyond some isolated suggestions of statuary and hedges. But what he could see clearly was the lighted medieval cloister. It stood gleaming in the distant moonlight like a crown capping a series of rising, shadowy garden terraces.

Gaetano’s hand slipped into his left pants pocket and wrapped itself around the handle of the silenced automatic. He shivered from the sensation the cold steel caused, and in his mind’s eye, Gaetano could see the red laser dot on the professor’s forehead, which would precede his pulling the trigger.

9:37 P.M., Monday, March 11, 2002

“I recognize this statue from somewhere,” Daniel said. “Do you know if it’s famous?”

Daniel and Stephanie were standing on a manicured patch of grass, gazing at a white marble reclining nude that appeared to glow in the humid, misty semidarkness of the Ocean Club’s Versailles-inspired garden. A silvery blue illumination washed over the formal landscape and contrasted sharply with the deep purple shadows.

“I think it’s a copy of a Canova,” Stephanie replied. “So, yes, it’s reasonably famous. If it is the one I’m thinking of, the original is in the Borghese Museum in Rome.”

Daniel shot an awed glance in her direction, which she missed. She was absorbed in lightly touching the woman’s thigh. “It’s amazing how much like skin the marble appears in the moonlight.”

“How on earth did you know it is a copy of a Canova, whatever the hell that is?”

“Antonio Canova was a renowned eighteenth-century neoclassical Italian sculptor.”

“I’m impressed,” Daniel said, with continued awed disbelief. “How do you happen to have such arcane facts at your fingertips? Or are you pulling my leg from having read about this garden in the brochure in the room?”

“I didn’t read the brochure, but I saw you reading it. Maybe you should be giving us a tour.”

“Not a chance! The only part I read carefully was about the cloister up on the hill. Seriously, how did you know about Canova?”

“I was a history minor in college,” Stephanie said. “That included a survey course in art history, which I remember more about than most of my other classes.”

“You amaze me sometimes,” Daniel commented. Following Stephanie’s example, he reached out and touched the marble cushion on which the woman reclined. “It is uncanny how these guys were able to make marble appear so soft. Look at the way her body indents the fabric.”

“Daniel!” Stephanie said with sudden insistence.

Daniel straightened up and tried to read Stephanie’s expression in the darkness. She was staring back toward the pool area. He followed her line of sight but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the shadowy moonlit landscape. “What’s the matter? Did you see something?”

“I did,” Stephanie said. “I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I think there is someone over there behind that balustrade.”

“So what! There’s bound to be people wandering around out here, as beautiful as this place is. It’s not as if we can expect to have this huge garden to ourselves.”

“True,” Stephanie agreed. “But it just seemed as if whoever I saw ducked away as soon as I turned my head. It was like they didn’t want to be seen.”

“What are you trying to suggest?” Daniel questioned, with one of his scornful laughs. “Someone is spying on us?”

“Well, yeah, something like that.”

“Oh, come on, Stephanie! I wasn’t serious when I suggested it.”

“Well, I’m serious. I really think I saw someone.” She raised herself up on her tiptoes and strained to see in the darkness. “And there’s someone else!” she said excitedly.

“Where? I don’t see anybody.”

“Back by the pool. Someone just disappeared from the light into the shadows of the snack bar.”

Daniel reached out and gripped Stephanie by both shoulders, making her turn to look at him. She resisted initially. “Hey! Come on! We’re out here to relax. We’ve both had a hell of a day, and you in particular.”

“Maybe we should go back and take a walk on the beach, where there are always people. This garden seems too big, too dark, and too isolated for my current taste.”

“We’re going up to that cloister,” Daniel said authoritatively, pointing up the hill. “We’ve both been intrigued by it, and as I said earlier, our visiting it is metaphysically apropos. We need some shielding from our current turmoil. And nighttime is the best time to visit ruins. So pull yourself together and let’s go!”

“What if I really did see someone duck behind that balustrade?” Stephanie went back to craning her neck to see over the bougainvilleae.

“Do you want me to run back there and check? If you do, I’ll be glad to go to put your mind at ease. You’re being understandably paranoid, although paranoid nonetheless. We’re on the hotel’s grounds, for Christ’s sake. They have security all over this place, remember?”

“I suppose,” Stephanie reluctantly agreed. A fleeting image of Kurt Hermann leering at her passed through her mind. She had a lot of reasons to be on edge.

“What do you say; do you want me to run back there?”

“No, I want you to stay here.”

“Well, come on then! Let’s go up to the cloister.” Daniel took her hand and guided her back to the central promenade that led through a number of terraces and up widely spaced flights of steps to the crest of the hill where the cloister was sited. In contrast to the dark garden, the cloister was illuminated with hidden ground-level lights to highlight its gothic arches and give it a jewellike quality in the distance.

As they gained each terrace and skirted a central fountain or statue, they noticed additional statuary to either side within shadowed arbors. Some of these side statues were marble, while others were stone or cast bronze. Although tempted to take a look at them, they avoided any more detours.

“I had no idea there was so much art out here,” Stephanie commented.

“It was a private estate before it was a hotel,” Daniel said. “At least according to the brochure.”

“What did it say about the cloister?”

“All I remember is that it’s French and was built in the twelfth century.”

Stephanie whistled in wonderment. “Very few cloisters have ever left France. In fact, I only know of one other, and it’s not that old.”

They climbed the last flight of steps, and when they reached the top, they found a paved public road cutting across their path and isolating the cloister from its formal gardens. When they had viewed the cloister from below, there was no way to see the road unless a vehicle had gone by, and none had.

“This is a surprise,” Daniel said, looking up and down the road. It ran east to west along the spine of Paradise Island.

“I guess it’s the price of progress,” Stephanie said. “I bet it goes out to the golf course.”

They crossed the road, the blacktop of which was still radiating the heat of the day, and climbed a few more steps to gain the crown of the hill dominated by the cloister. The ancient structure was merely a square, roofless, double row of gothic-columned arches. The inner row had a bit of tracery in the form of a single foil within each arch.

Daniel and Stephanie approached the edifice. They had to watch their footing, because in contrast to the lower garden, the ground near the cloister was uneven and littered with chunks of stone and crushed seashells.