The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

Dart, I had to tell him where the manuscripts were just as soon as I myself knew where you had finally hidden them—and certainly before you and I had to leave for Russia. How else would Dart have been able to retrieve them from the Austrian National Library before someone else did?”

The word that instantly leapt to mind was Olivier’s oy. Virgilio, it seems, had followed us right from the Café Central, and as Wolfgang handed those slips out the door of our room in the Austrian National Library, he’d copied down every single book title. Actually, I couldn’t think of a word for that.

As we walked back along the narrow street, close enough to the river to smell the damp night air, I felt like weeping.

Wolfgang had taken my hand as if nothing were wrong, and now he squeezed it. “Let’s walk down by the river for a bit, shall we?” he suggested.

At the end of the street I saw the glittering lights of the Île de la Cité that seemed to be underwater. What the hey? I thought in silent desperation. I could always throw myself into the drink—or drag him in too, if he didn’t start coming up with some decent answers soon. This was hardly my idea of a weekend in Paris with Wolfgang. Right now I wanted to shoot him. I’d destroyed all Sam had risked his life for, by forgetting Laf’s injunction to “resist the men, until you learn exactly in what kind of situation you are involved.”

Well, I sure knew what kind of situation I was involved in now, though I hadn’t a clue what in God’s name to do about it. I felt like screaming my brains out. I still knew less than nothing about these bloody manuscripts! Just thinking of all they’d cost ripped me inside out. But the night was far from over, and I vowed to get some straight answers before it was up.

We went along the quai to where we could see, across the water, the illuminated facade of Notre Dame towering above its famous wall of ancient ivy that dripped down to the rippling river.

“Ariel,” said Wolfgang, turning my face up to his in the glittering night light. “If I lie to you, you say it makes you unhappy. But when I tell you the truth, you’re unhappy, too. I love you so much—what can I say or do that will make you happy?”

“Wolfgang, you’ve just said that you and some mafioso and my boss Pastor Dart have manipulated me and betrayed me, that you’ve betrayed everything Sam ever stood for—what indeed he may have lost his life for—and you expect that to make me happy?” I said. “It would make me happy if you’d just tell me the truth—up front for a change—rather than forcing me to pry it out of you, or keeping me in the dark ‘for my own good.’ I want you to tell me right now exactly what you know about Pandora’s manuscripts—what they have to do with Russia and Central Asia and nuclear matters, as clearly they do, and what role you and those others play in all of the above.”

“It seems you understand nothing I’ve just said,” Wolfgang said in frustration. “First of all, I never said Virgilio was a mafioso but that he was from a family of arms dealers—there is a difference. I said your uncle might have heard of mafia connections: those like Virgilio often must maintain contacts with such people for their own security. In my field too, if we treat every arms dealer as an enemy, then all activity goes beneath the table and we lose any measure of control over smuggling that we might have had to begin with—we close all doors.

“But when you speak of betrayal,” he added, “there’s something you clearly don’t know. There’s a group I’m given to understand had investigated Samuel Behn for many years, since his father Earnest’s death. They’d even hired your cousin at times to work for them in order to win his trust. But in the end I believe it was they who killed him.

“These people claimed to work for the United States government, but in fact were multinational, controlled by a man with a lengthy dossier—a man named Theron Vane. When I was absent, that week before I came to Sun Valley to find you, I learned several things about this man. The first: that he was in San Francisco the week your cousin Sam died. They were working on an assignment together. The second: that Vane went underground immediately after Sam’s death and has not resurfaced. The third—and you must believe me about this part, Ariel—is that Olivier Maxfield is, and has been ever since the day you met him, a henchman of Theron Vane. Maxfield came to Idaho, and secured his job, and also his acquaintance and friendship with you, for one reason and one reason only: because you were the only way they could think of to slip inside the defenses of your cousin Sam.”

I stood there absolutely stunned. I knew from Sam that he had worked with Theron Vane for over ten years. The man must have hired him out of college, just as the Pod had done with me. I also knew Theron Vane was there when Sam had “died” because, according to Sam, the man was killed in his place! And in that cryptic message Olivier had left with Laf, he too admitted he worked for Theron Vane.

In hindsight, it did seem odd for Olivier’s credentials to have matched mine so perfectly that from day one, five years ago, we’d been assigned codirection of the same project. Not to mention how he’d lured me to my tenancy in his basement apartment by providing cheap rent, designer meals, the willingness to cat-sit in a pinch—and by conjuring up that weird dream about me as the Virgin Mary beating the Mormon prophet Moroni at a game of pinball!

Indeed, all Wolfgang