Island of Time Read online

  ‘You mean, they had turned it off?’

  ‘I mean, Jackson, the alarm did not sound. Their system is linked to a professional security agency. They were not contacted. We only know of the incident because neighbors on all sides reported a bomb going off. A silent one. Two passing motorists called in the same report.’

  Jackson checked the nearest window. There was no sign of cracking. Even bulletproof glass would have been punctured by such compression. ‘A quiet bomb that doesn’t blow out the walls?’

  In reply, Simeon gestured towards the home’s interior. ‘Tell me what you think.’

  Jackson’s first thought was a kitchen fire. ‘Do they have a gas range?’

  ‘La Cornue, top of the line,’ Simeon confirmed. ‘Ninety thousand euros.’

  ‘So maybe a gas pipe sprung a leak. An open back door could have funneled the force away from the front windows. The fire consumed everything flammable and went out. The security system failed. It happens.’

  ‘Which was exactly my first thought as well,’ Simeon said. ‘And it is wrong. Incorrect from start to finish.’

  ‘You know this how?’

  ‘Because I have never met a fire that has learned how to jump against gravity and ignore an entire floor.’ Simeon turned to the stairs. ‘Come, Jackson. Let me introduce you to the real mystery.’

  The stairs encircled a steel and concrete monolith, perhaps fifteen feet to a side, that served as the lone support column for the entire house. Simeon took Jackson upstairs, where the only ash on the white wool carpet came from the footprints of other investigators. All the upstairs rooms were empty of clothing or furniture or personal items of any kind.

  Simeon returned to the stairwell and led Jackson down into the cellar. The odor of smoke and ash was thicker there, but Jackson found no evidence of a fire in the landing or the wine cellar or what he assumed was a maid’s chamber. Every room was utterly bare, all the closets empty.

  Simeon then led Jackson across the hall and stepped through the final door. ‘Voilà.’

  The windowless office was carved from the hillside behind the house and was almost as large as the upstairs parlor. The walls were bare concrete. The room contained the one piece of furniture Jackson had seen in the entire house: a massive desk of polished gray stone.

  The ash here was almost two feet thick. Jackson reached down and cupped a handful. It held the same treacly consistency as upstairs. The investigators had plowed several furrows through the muck. Where they had moved, an ash-stained carpet was visible. The ash did not shift or fill in or float in the air. Which was why, Jackson realized, Simeon had not offered him a face mask.

  Jackson needed both hands to pull the door around so he could inspect the interior face. The ash clung to the base like glue. The door’s veneer had been burned away, revealing solid steel. Jackson ran his gloved fingers down the surface and asked, ‘Who lived here?’

  ‘Monsieur Bernard Bouchon ran one of Switzerland’s largest manufacturers of timepieces.’ Simeon was lean and hardened by sixteen years on the force. He was more or less the same age as Jackson and carried himself with an unkempt grace. He spoke the man’s name with an acidic bite. ‘Madame Bouchon owned a successful interior design firm.’

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘Bernard Bouchon has come to our attention before,’ Simeon replied.

  ‘He’s been arrested?’

  Simeon tch-tched. ‘Arresting a man as powerful as Bouchon would require me to answer for my actions to the national government in Bern. He has been questioned. Three times. His homes have been searched twice.’

  ‘The crime?’

  ‘Dealing in forbidden texts. And artifacts.’ Simeon started along the broadest of the channels through the ash. ‘Come. There is more.’

  The path led them past the desk and around what Jackson had assumed was the back wall. Instead, an alcove led to an open safe door that measured at least ten feet to a side. Simeon gestured Jackson inside. When he hesitated, Simeon said, ‘When I said I needed your assistance, Jackson, I was being sincere.’

  The vault’s interior was twenty feet square. Floor-to-ceiling steel shelves lined three walls. They were coated with ash that clumped together like melted wax. The ash here was thigh-deep. The investigators had tracked around the sides while working the chamber and taking samples from the ash and dusting for prints. They had been careful to stay well clear of the room’s center because of the imprints. Jackson did not know what else to call them. Three valleys were cut from the ash, as precise as sculptures.

  ‘Monsieur Bouchon was married with two children,’ Simeon told him. ‘A boy aged eleven, and a daughter, four.’

  The imprints formed the shapes of three bodies: one adult perhaps five and a half feet tall, a slender figure a foot or so shorter, and a child. All were frozen silhouettes, snapshots of people sleeping peacefully. All three indentations in the ash formed profiles of bodies half-curled on their sides.

  Jackson followed the trail around to where he could grip the shelf and climb it like a ladder. From the higher position, he looked down into valleys so precisely carved he could make out the features on three faces that were no longer there.

  The shapes reminded Jackson of a trip he had taken with his late wife to Pompeii. Sylvie had been a Talent specializing in healing herbs. She had brought Jackson to Italy in search of rare plants that only grew on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and could only be identified in the light of a full moon. They had spent their days wandering the silent streets of the ancient city, both of them captivated by the shapes frozen in lava. None of the figures showed any sign of distress. Just like these.

  Simeon led him back up the stairs, where they dumped their protective gear and exited the house. They stood on the front stoop, staring out over the mist-draped waters, breathing deeply. Jackson thought he smelled the sweet freshness of incoming rain.

  ‘So, my friend. Tell me—’ Simeon was halted by the chiming of his phone. He checked the read-out, then started down the stairs. ‘Excuse me. The chief.’ Three minutes later, Simeon turned and declared, ‘We are ordered to withdraw immediately.’

  ‘Who can take you off your own crime scene?’

  ‘Precisely the question I asked my chief. And exactly what he asked the minister of the interior in Bern, who issued this order. The answer is no one seems to know. Or, rather, whoever knows is not talking.’ But when Jackson started down the steps, Simeon continued, ‘Not you, my friend. You are to stay.’

  ‘I don’t …’ Jackson glanced at his car. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘You brought someone?’

  ‘A new guy. Assigned from Brussels.’

  ‘He arrives just in time for this?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  Simeon frowned at Jackson’s car, but all he said was, ‘You will tell me what is going on, yes? The very instant you know.’

  THREE

  When Luca asked Jackson for a description of what he had discovered, Jackson responded with the terse sound bites he used in reporting to Brussels. Preparing top-secret accounts for HQ had once been part of his regular duties. As Jackson spoke, Luca’s fingers ran lightly over the cane’s surface, illuminating traces of half-seen script.

  By the time Jackson went silent, rain speckled the car’s windows. Lightning over the lake created diamond prisms on the windshield. When Luca did not speak, Jackson asked, ‘Why isn’t there thunder?’

  Luca stirred. ‘Where are the Geneva police?’

  ‘They pulled back off the property. But you already know that, since you made the call, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was done for their safety,’ Luca said.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer my question?’

  ‘You already know it is not lightning.’ Luca opened his door. ‘Let’s go.’

  Luca kept a light touch on Jackson’s arm as they crossed the graveled forecourt. He weaved the cane in a tight arc, the tip trailing a faint glow that flickered in time to the lig
htning over the lake. Jackson asked, ‘Are you the least bit worried about the Swiss ban on magic?’

  ‘What you witness is merely a discharge,’ Luca replied.

  ‘You mean, everything we’re seeing here is the result of magic that was used earlier?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Including what’s happening out there on the lake?’

  ‘Correct.’ Luca climbed the stairs, entered the front portal, and halted in the granite-tiled foyer. He breathed deeply, then said, ‘The cellar, yes?’

  ‘That’s where the bodies are located.’

  ‘Careful. Do not jump to conclusions.’

  ‘You didn’t see the imprints of those bodies in the ash.’

  ‘And you were the one who told me the investigators have found no trace of life anywhere in the house.’ Luca motioned with his cane. ‘Where are the stairs?’

  ‘First, you need to put on a protective coverall.’

  ‘No, Jackson. I do not.’ He gestured with the cane, and this time the tip’s illumination was as strong as a living flame. Where the staff touched, the ash rippled and flowed and moved aside, leaving them a clean furrow in which to walk. ‘Lead me downstairs.’

  Jackson took hold of Luca’s arm and used the descent to make a closer inspection. Both of Luca’s eye sockets were covered by scar tissue that was creased and wrinkled in the manner of well-healed wounds. Other than the empty sockets, Luca Tami was handsome in a sparse and rugged manner, with a muscular frame and square-jawed features.

  When they reached the cellar, Luca’s movements became as certain as those of a man with eyes. He walked with his nose aloft, inhaling long, slow breaths. He crossed the downstairs hall and entered the office. The tip of his staff kept weaving, and the ash kept slipping out of his way. Jackson followed in his path. The channel made by Luca’s passage revealed an utterly spotless beige carpet. The ash banked up to either side of their track, as high as Jackson’s waist.

  Jackson had once thought he had a cop’s ability to withstand any truth, however deadly. But that had been before he had retreated to the most boring Interpol assignment on earth. Where he had hoped he might hold on to some shred of his former existence and reknit what was left of his life. Jackson watched Luca cross in front of the desk and wondered if he was ready for whatever Luca was about to reveal. Because he was absolutely certain, beyond any shred of logical doubt, that the scarred steel portal opened to far more than an ash-filled office. Up ahead loomed his former world of scalding powers and impossible dilemmas.

  Jackson stepped into the room.

  Luca said, ‘Tell me what you see.’

  ‘Windowless office. Stone desk the size of a boat. Three walls are paneled, the one behind the desk is carpeted. Faint shadows where framed pictures once hung. Several floor-to-ceiling shelves, empty except for ash. The lights are embedded in the ceiling.’

  ‘The desk is bare?’

  ‘I don’t know if the investigators removed anything. The Swiss detective, Simeon, didn’t say—’

  ‘No. I meant, is there any ash on its surface?’

  Jackson was left feeling exposed by the question. The only piece of furniture in the entire house was utterly clean. He felt as if he had made a rookie’s mistake, not noticing that before. ‘No ash at all. Why is that?’

  ‘The question is not why it is clean but why it still exists. And the answer is most likely because it was carved from the bedrock upon which the house stands.’

  ‘You mean, like an altar?’

  ‘Precisely.’ Luca remained where he was. Light pulsed up the cane, from the tip to the hilt, brilliant enough to glow through his clenched fingers. ‘Where is the vault?’

  ‘Inside an alcove opening to your left.’

  ‘Is there a position where you can observe both the vault’s interior and the desk?’

  ‘I guess … Hang on.’ Jackson stepped off Luca’s channel and felt the ash cling to his feet and legs, as if it was trying to prevent him from shifting position. ‘This stuff is like wet cement.’

  ‘The charge is growing. Hurry.’

  Jackson forced his way to the corner opposite the desk. As soon as he stopped, the ash congealed around him. Slowly it began rising, clenching his knees, his thighs. ‘I’m in position. But the ash—’

  ‘Forget the ash. Watch closely.’

  Luca moved around the carpeted wall and approached the open safe. The ash covering the floor shifted away from his cane. The motion caused ripples across the floor’s covering. Jackson felt the tremors course through his lower limbs.

  The staff’s tip traced a smoldering line in the carpet as Luca stepped forward and halted in the safe’s portal. Luca breathed again, nodded to himself, then asked, ‘Where were the imprints of the three bodies?’

  ‘The woman’s is directly in front of you. The two children are to either side.’

  Luca breathed again, then said, ‘I detect no hint of death.’

  Jackson found no reason to doubt the man. Which surprised him. He had a lifetime’s experience in the illusions that magic could throw up. And yet he found himself trusting the blind stranger. ‘So what happened to the family?’

  ‘That is precisely the question.’ Luca gripped his staff with both hands. ‘Ready, Jackson?’

  He wanted to ask, For what? He wanted to tell the man to wait, give him a chance to retreat to the safety of Interpol’s boring office. Instead, he replied, ‘Ready.’

  FOUR

  Luca lowered the staff to the floor by his feet. He intoned one long, slow word. Luca’s voice was different now, low as a foghorn and carrying the sorrow of a hundred empty lives.

  The ash rustled and muttered and rolled back to gather around the side walls. Luca asked, ‘Does any imprint remain from the three?’

  Jackson started forward. ‘Not that I can see—’

  ‘Stay where you are!’

  But Jackson had already jerked back. His footstep had raised a spark as loud as a pistol shot.

  ‘Jackson.’

  ‘I’m good.’ His shoe smoldered and the smoke stank of burned leather.

  ‘Watch carefully. Tell me if anything changes.’ Luca lifted his staff once again and spoke in that same rumbling cadence. His shoulders bunched, his neck, wrists, arms. His entire body arched as he lifted the staff to its pinnacle. A spark flashed between the floor and the tip, then continued to grow, whirling now around the entire staff.

  Luca slammed the staff into the carpet.

  For a pair of heartbeats, there was nothing save Luca’s rasping breath. Then Jackson heard a faint drumbeat, far in the distance.

  Jackson had once stood on the lip of an awakening volcano. The eruptions had produced rumbles so deep in cadence and tone he could not actually hear them. Instead, his bones had vibrated to the sound created by an angry earth.

  Just like now.

  The drumbeats grew in volume as they approached, the march of a vengeful giant. Each step shivered Jackson’s every bone and sinew.

  Luca yelled, ‘Watch!’

  The sparks were a constant flood now, rippling across the floor, through the door to Jackson’s right, out of the safe, a million angry snakes speeding towards Luca. The blind man stood at the heart of an electric maelstrom. The tempest grew until Jackson could no longer see anything except a fiery cocoon. The light was so fierce it shone through the hands Jackson used to shield his face.

  Even Luca’s voice carried the electric distortion. ‘Watch!’

  Then, ‘I see it!’

  Luca lifted the staff. The electric snakes vanished, but the distortion kept its grip on the blind man’s voice. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Scrolls on the table. Like … shadows, but they glow …’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t … Three. One on top, two more underneath. And the safe is rimmed by fire.’

  ‘Never mind the safe!’ Luca reached out a trembling arm. ‘Help me!’

  Jackson stepped forward and gripped the outstretched arm.
The current shot through his hand as if he’d touched an open socket. Jackson grunted in pain.

  ‘To the desk, hurry!’

  Jackson kept his hold because he could tell Luca would have gone down if he had let go. By the time they reached the desk, his hand felt blistered. ‘OK, we’re there.’

  The words came as hard as Luca’s breath. ‘Tell me what you see!’

  The translucent sheets glowed and pulsed in tandem with the current blistering Jackson’s palms. ‘The top scroll is stretched out over the other two. Right across the whole desk.’

  ‘Is there writing?’

  ‘In places. But I can’t read—’

  ‘Put my hands on the script you can see. Hurry.’

  As Luca traced his fingers across the surface that was not there, the words came alive beneath his touch. They changed. They writhed catlike upon the translucent surface, then stabilized once Luca’s fingers had moved on. Luca muttered beneath his breath as his fingers traced the lines, faster and faster as the scrolls began to fade.

  ‘No,’ Luca moaned, his arms sweeping in a constant blur. ‘Not yet.’

  The office was filled with a vast groan as if the house itself regretted ever letting them past the front gate. Jackson felt as much as heard the rush of power beyond the wall. Luca appeared so caught up in the living script that he could neither hear nor give conscious thought to anything except the gradually fading images beneath his fingers.

  Jackson watched the ash mash itself flatter and flatter, as though condensing into a second floor. He could walk across it now, though the sparks continued to rise about him and the odor of burning shoe leather tracked his progress back to where he could look around the partial wall.

  The vault was rimmed by fire. Only this was unlike any flame he had ever seen before. The blaze was alive. It framed the safe and consumed the door. But there was no heat. Nor did it attack or give off any sense of danger.

  Luca had said the vault didn’t matter. Yet Jackson felt drawn toward the fire enveloping the vault’s entire frame, flowing in a brilliant rhythmic pattern. Faster and faster, as though Jackson’s approach excited it. As though it saw him. Jackson knew the thoughts were ridiculous even before they were fully formed. And yet that was how it seemed.