It was his own name.
“No,” David urged, as Ascanio started to move the flashlight beam away. “Look!”
He pointed to his name, and from what little he could read at a glance, he saw something about a search—die Suche—and an Italienisch M?dchen, no doubt referring to Olivia.
“We don’t have time!” Ascanio said. “Come on!”
But David wasn’t about to leave this behind. He slipped the journal into his backpack before turning to see Ascanio probing the edges of one of the floor-length mirrors with his fingertips.
Rigaud was almost done with his exercises, and admiring his own bulging biceps—he could not understand how other men his age could let themselves get so badly out of shape—when Ali offered him the hash pipe again.
“If you want to relax,” Ali said, lying on the bed in nothing but an unbuttoned pair of jeans, “this will do a better job than that.” The pale scar on his throat looked whiter in the lamplight.
Rigaud did two more reps with the barbells before placing them back on the rubber mat in the corner of the room. Straightening up, he put his hands to the small of his back, where the T-shirt was stuck to his body, and wearily exhaled.
Ali took a hit off the pipe, then through clenched teeth said, “You still look pissed.”
“She talks to me like I’m some goddamned butler,” Rigaud said, sitting down beside him on the bed. “She forgets I was a captain in the French army.”
He took the pipe, held a lighted match to the bowl, and inhaled deeply.
“Screw her,” Ali said, putting a consoling hand on his arm. “You don’t work for Ava. You work for her husband.”
Rigaud nodded, knowing he was right. But it was still hard to take. He had accepted this job because it felt like a cause, a mission, but over the years he had begun to have his doubts. What was he really doing? Whatever powers he once thought had been at Linz’s command, they seemed to have deserted him. He was a frustrated, impotent man—in every sense, if Rigaud could judge from Ava’s mood—and the tasks he set for Rigaud were increasingly redundant and defensive. Rigaud longed to go on the offensive for a change; but every time he even suggested as much to Linz, however obliquely, the man flew off the handle and went into one of his foaming, arm-waving, apoplectic fits. If he didn’t know better, Rigaud might have thought he was going to keel over on the spot.
Ali was rubbing his shoulders, and Rigaud took another long drag on the pipe. He kept his windows open to let out the smoke and the aroma. Linz, he knew, would not approve. But the master suite was far off, at the top of the eastern turret. And good God, why was someone of his age, and former rank, having to worry about such stuff? “Lie back,” Ali was saying. “I’ll give you a massage.”
“I still have work to do.”
“So do I,” Ali said, rising up on his knees and kneading the kinks in his back.
Putting the hash pipe on the bedside table and pulling off his sweaty T-shirt, Rigaud rolled over onto the bed. The hash was very pure, and all the trials of the recent days—most notably dispatching Julius Jantzen—began to recede. It was highly annoying that a man like Ernst Escher was still running loose, but the Turks would eventually track him down again. They weren’t good for much—and Rigaud had often argued with Linz to replace them with a more professional bunch—but Linz liked them for their single-mindedness and overall lack of curiosity. Even Rigaud appreciated their unslakable taste for revenge.
Ali’s fingers were working their magic on the knots in his back and shoulders and Rigaud allowed himself to drift away. Soft music was playing, that Eastern stuff that Ali liked, but right then it sounded good even to Rigaud. He remembered that he had to tell the cook, who arrived with the other servants at six in morning, that Linz wanted cream of wheat for breakfast. But then, just as promptly, he forgot all about it.
Chapter 39
Ascanio pressed the gilded border of one of the mirrors, and it opened out to reveal a spiral staircase that rose toward the top of the turret. Then, raising one finger to urge absolute silence, he slipped onto the staircase, with David right behind. The steps wound upwards for twenty or thirty feet before coming to an end behind what looked like a heavy flap of cloth. It was only on closer inspection in the flashlight beam that David could tell, from the complex threadwork, that what they were standing behind was an immense, hanging tapestry.
Ascanio flicked off his light, and ever so gingerly pushed an edge of the cloth to one side. Over his shoulder, David could see that they were in a kind of anteroom, with a reading chair and a marquetry table holding crystal decanters and a brass lamp. A master bedroom was just beyond it. He could hear classical music playing, a shower running, and voices.
Linz and his wife.
“Ava, bring me the pills.”
“How many of these are you going to take?”