Magnus Flyte - City of Lost Dreams

“Yes,” she choked out. “I heard the gun. Then bullets . . . hitting water.”

Max frowned, staring out over the Vltava. Sarah listened to the crowd of Czechs and tourists buzzing around the man the way people did when something awful happened, like a flock of wild turkeys in the presence of a snake. She tried to say more but she was cold and exhausted. And Max being so close to her, touching her, was confusing. She heard sirens in the distance and looked over at the man, catching a glimpse of his long scraggly hair and beard. What she had taken for a sleeping bag was actually a heavy brown embroidered cloak over robes. Some kind of priest? Or was it a costume? The man wasn’t moving. Nico caught Sarah’s eye and shook his head.

So her efforts had been in vain. The last of the adrenaline left her body and she began to shake. Max put his arms around her.

“You were so fast,” he said. “And I could see you . . . but then I couldn’t . . . and I jumped in, and I thought . . . she can’t . . . I have to tell her . . .”

“It was stupid of me,” said Sarah. “I don’t know what I was thinking. . . .”

Wait. What were they talking about? Max didn’t smell like gardenias now. He smelled like foul river water, but underneath that, it was him. Max. His smell was still intoxicating. She was going to kiss him. He seemed instantly aware of her desire and, as always, met it with his own. His face, his lips, were close to hers. They had just jumped into one river, why not another? She had just chosen life over death. How much time did any of them have?

“ Ack .” The bearded man suddenly opened his eyes and coughed up a lungful of brackish water. “ Bluuuuck .” The crowd murmured, pressing forward. Max ordered them back. The man struggled to sit up, turning his head and looking straight at Sarah. His features were fine, his eyes a very pale blue. He said something Sarah couldn’t understand in a thick, strangled voice, then closed his eyes.

The waiter felt for the man’s neck, and began performing CPR, but after a few minutes Sarah could see that it was no use. The man was dead.

“Max? Max?”

A red-headed woman, wearing a long white coat and gloves, pushed her way through the crowd to where Max was crouched next to Sarah. He immediately let go of her and stood up.

“Max, what happened?” The woman grabbed his arm. “Are you all right? My God, look at you. You’re soaking.” The woman’s accent was the kind of plummy, drawly English that Sarah associated with BBC news presenters and Agatha Christie mysteries. “Harriet,” said Max.

Harriet began ordering people about, calling for a blanket for Max, and brandy.

An ambulance arrived. Sarah was given a thermal wrap and had her vitals tested. A technician complimented her on her blood pressure as Max explained the events to Harriet. “Sarah managed to pull the man from the river, but . . .”

“My God,” the woman murmured, stroking his arm. Now that circulation had returned to her body, Sarah had time to take in Max’s new girlfriend. Harriet’s red hair cascaded down her back in a cluster of perfectly disorganized pre-Raphaelite curls. Her white coat buttoned tightly around her waist, then flared out. Her gloves, Sarah saw, had actual gauntlets. Where did she shop? The Edwardian Gap? Sarah took a guess that Harriet did not wear off-season snowman underwear. Probably silk stockings and garters. Sarah called Nico over to her.

“What did he say?” she asked. “The man. Before he died. Could you understand him?”

“He said that he was John of Nepomuk,” Nico whispered in her ear, “and that he was pushed.”

The ambulance took the dead man away. Sarah told the police about the shots, and they notified the water patrol. Sarah was formally introduced to Harriet, which was awkward, since Sarah was still wet and reeking of Vltava, and Harriet was wearing white gloves. The two women nodded at each other.

“Nico, get Sarah back to my place,” Max said, tossing a set of keys at the little man. “I’ll be along in a minute.” They left him to the tender ministrations of Harriet, and Nico drove her to Max’s “place”—the Lobkowicz family palace at Prague Castle that Max had converted to a museum, where Max kept a private apartment.

Sarah noted the feminine toiletries in Max’s bathroom. Harriet seemed quite ensconced. When she finished showering, she saw that Nico had rather wickedly laid out a choice of robes for her: a man’s dressing gown in heavy silk, monogrammed with Max’s initials, and an ornate Japanese kimono reeking of gardenias. Sarah searched through Max’s clothes until she found a T-shirt, sweatpants, and a cashmere sweater that had escaped the busy monogrammer.

She found both Max and Nico in the living room, waiting for her. Max’s wolfhound, Moritz, rushed forward to lick her toes. Max handed her a glass of whiskey, not quite meeting her eye. Sarah was grateful for Nico’s presence, which would keep them from discussing anything too intimate.

“Did anyone call the morgue?” Sarah asked. “Do we know who that guy was?”

“He said he was John of Nepomuk,” Max reminded her. “Who was a fourteenth-century saint.”

“Right.” Sarah took a sip of whiskey. “So our guy was either high or delusional.”

Nico shrugged. “Our guy was speaking Medieval Latin and Bohemian.”

“Okay, so a language history student,” suggested Sarah. “Driven mad by declensions and pursued by the Mob for unpaid backgammon debts. Someone was shooting at us.”

“John of Nepomuk was pushed into the Vltava in 1393,” said Nico. “Reportedly because he wouldn’t reveal to the king what the queen’s confession was all about. John of Nepomuk is the saint of the confessional. The saint of keeping secrets.”

Max and the little man exchanged a look.

“You think it means something?” asked Max.

“Everything means something.” Nicolas narrowed his eyes. “I have been feeling for months now . . . a sense that someone is looking over my shoulder. Following me. Or maybe I am following him.”

“Maybe we’re not the only ones looking . . .” Max glanced at Sarah.

“Looking for what?” Sarah asked, although she knew the answer to this. Max believed his family had long been members of a secret Order of the Golden Fleece. The Fleece—a book that reputedly contained the answers to the deepest mysteries of life and death—had been missing since the seventeenth century. Sarah had once tried to help Max on his quest, but she couldn’t get involved in all that now. She was exhausted and more than a bit impatient. This was always the way things were in Prague: mysterious, watery, elusive. It was like the minute you got off the plane here, all firm ground dissolved. And you did crazy things. Like falling in love.

“I think it’s a warning.” Nico took a big gulp of whiskey. “A sign.”

I don ’ t want signs, Sarah thought. I don ’ t want warnings and strange portents. I want answers.

“I’ll be going to London tomorrow,” Nico continued. “There are some things from Philippine’s recipe that I would like to acquire for Pols. Max, I trust that this conversation will remain very much under your hat?”

“If you mean Harriet,” Max answered stiffly, after a brief glance at Sarah, “then, yes. Yes, of course. I haven’t told her anything about . . . anything. If you think Philippine’s medicines might be helpful, I’ll go through the library here and see if I can find anything related to her work. Worth a shot.”

“And Sarah—”

“I’m leaving for Vienna after Pols’s concert.” She stood up. “I have my own quest.”

“Do you have the key I gave you?” said Nico, moving forward and taking up her hand.