The Hypnotist (2 page)

The only way to play with wolves, his grandfather had taught him, was to be a wolf. And he was certainly playing with wolves. The minute he’d met Taghinia, Samimi had known that he couldn’t trust him. Taghinia, with his flatulence and his teeth yellowed from the constant cigars, who flaunted his superiority over Samimi and tried to humiliate the younger man at every opportunity. He’d piled more and more work on him, so that now Samimi was doing the lion’s share of his boss’s job as well as his own. The only thing that kept him from complaining was his long-term goal, to find a way to stay in America.

At thirty-five, he’d arrived in New York and felt true passion for the first time in his life. He loved everything about his adopted city: its restaurants, culture, nightlife, energetic pace, its architecture and especially its women. Samimi felt as if he’d merely been alive before; now he was living. Complaining would only ensure his return to Tehran, so he put up with this
fifty-two-year-old man who, among his other sins, was immune to the temptations of his adopted home.
How was that possible?
Taghinia lived three blocks away from the office and never strayed from the neighborhood for anything other than necessities, actually boasting that he’d never seen Central Park, Broadway at night, the Upper East Side or the inside of a restaurant other than Ravagh, the Persian eatery less than ten blocks away. Taghinia often said that he would gladly die for his country and living in New York was halfway to dying. Despising the city for its excesses, he focused on the day when his homeland’s recognition as a superpower would be restored. He repeatedly told Samimi that on the day Islam’s universal dominance was reestablished he would rest, but not before.

Not me,
Samimi thought as he sat back down at the conference-room table.
Not me.
Dying for a principle was a lofty ideal, but not when there was so much to live for—Laurie Yardley being a perfect example of how much. He’d left her apartment that morning while she was still lying naked in her bed, a wanton look on her face as she listed what would be waiting for him when he returned that night. And she was just one of the women Samimi was seeing. He sat down, just in time to hide the bulge in his pants.

“The longer you let this go the more damage can be done. These antique rugs need to be mended as soon as they start to unravel,” Nassir was saying over the speakerphone. “Do you understand? The time to take care of this is now.”

Samimi glanced down at his polished shoes on the brilliant sapphire-and-ruby rug. There were five other Persians of this quality in the office. Each was worth more than most people, even in America, made in a year. It was a travesty. These rugs belonged in museums, or at least hanging on the walls. Nonetheless, the minister’s suggestion didn’t make sense. Regardless
of how much traffic the rugs bore, or how much ash his boss dropped on the seventeenth-century masterpieces, none of them needed repairs. Taghinia and the minister were talking in a code Samimi didn’t officially know about but one he’d deciphered months ago.

“We’ll stay on top of it,” Taghinia said.

“I think it’s time to let Samimi be responsible for the rugs,” the minister said.

Taghinia looked over at Samimi, his thick eyebrows raised as if to suggest he was impressed. “Yes, of course, Minister.”

A shiver fishtailed down the younger man’s spine.

“Samimi, are you there?”

“Yes, Minister.”

“I’m counting on you.”

“Yes, Minister.”

“Taghinia will explain.”

Samimi tried to quash the panic down deep in his gut. “Yes, Minister,” he said, hoping that Nassir couldn’t hear how dry his voice had suddenly become.

“Excellent,” he said, and hung up.

“Repairs? What is he talking about?” Samimi asked.

Taghinia waved off the question. “We’re not talking about rugs, you fool.”

“It was a code?” Samimi hoped his acting would pass muster.

“Of course it was a code. The minister was telling me he wants us to get Hypnos home.”

“We have Reza working on that for us.”

“There is too much bureaucracy in this country. Too many regulatory commissions. Too many layers to deal with. We can do it much more quickly bypassing those formalities. We have to move the sculpture out ourselves.”

“We can’t take Hypnos out of the Met illegally.”

“We have men in place in the museum, don’t we?”

“Just two.”

“What’s to stop us from putting in a few more? Get five or six in there.”

“We put them inside the museum to protect the sculpture.”

Taghinia said nothing.

“You said it was security,” Samimi insisted.

“And it was, but it can become something else.”

Samimi hadn’t heard anything about this on the tapes. What had he missed? He felt stupid and then sick as something occurred to him. Twice during the past eight months, Samimi had delivered small objets d’art to the associate curator of the museum’s Islamic art department from a wealthy Iranian who Taghinia had said wished to remain anonymous.

“What about the pieces I’ve given to Deborah Mitchell…is she part of this plan?”

“More insurance.” Taghinia nodded.

“Are the pieces bugged?”

“No.” Taghinia laughed. “They are quite legitimate. I wanted you to get to know someone inside the museum who was familiar with the Islamic art collection.”

Samimi looked down at his fingers, splayed on the table. He had thought he’d outsmarted his boss, but he’d missed some important communiqués. “The Met is one of the most secure institutions in the world.”

“Your point?”

“It’s impenetrable.”

“You sound in awe of this museum. Are you? This Deborah Mitchell…does she mean something to you?”

From the first day that Samimi had walked into the great front hall of the Metropolitan Museum he’d been captivated by the marble and stone, the cool air perfumed by the gigantic ar
rangements of flowers tucked into alcoves, by the classical Beaux Arts architecture and the endless galleries leading to more endless galleries that offered up the artistic accomplishments of one great culture after another. It was hard for him to separate Deborah from where she worked. Of all the women he’d met in New York and was attracted to, she was the only one he’d refrained from trying to seduce. She was part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Of course not, but…what you are suggesting…it’s insane, Farid. You do realize that we are discussing an eight-foot-tall piece of sculpture. I know it’s an important artifact but…”

“Don’t be a fool. We’re talking about more than just a piece of sculpture.” He puffed on his cigar and his reptilian eyes narrowed. “In researching the records for Reza, our minister found a set of documents that he hasn’t shared with the lawyer, or anyone else. It appears that Hypnos could be a map of sorts that holds the secret to how man can access his inner realms and higher consciousness, making visions, clairvoyance, pre-cognition and out-of-body experiences all possible. If tapped, this power would allow man to use his imagination to affect reality. You’d just imagine murdering someone and your imagination would make it happen.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“For all the time you’ve spent in America you still haven’t learned her lessons, have you? Is there anything more valuable than potential, Ali? Than possibility? Than a promise or a threat? Hypnos and his secrets are rightfully ours. We want them back.” He flicked a half inch of dead ash into a crystal ashtray. “Whatever the cost.”

The lanky man ambled down the narrow Viennese street with the lazy insouciance of someone who never worried and who’d never been weighed down with tragedy or illness. He walked as if the stone pavers beneath his feet had been laid for him; as if the sun were shining and it were morning. But it was night and it was windy and wet, with the kind of cold, pelting rain that one expects in April, not May.

He’d been in this city for only six days but had seen enough to dislike it. Vienna felt tired to him, as if the weight of its secrets burdened its people with a heaviness they couldn’t shrug off and was too much for them to bear.

Or maybe he didn’t like it because he’d failed here.

He’d come to arrest Dr. Malachai Samuels for stealing ancient stones from an archaeological dig in Rome the year before. Samuels, a preeminent past-life therapist and amateur magician, had made all the evidence disappear, and to date neither Interpol nor the FBI had been able to connect him to the crime. But instead of taking the reincarnationist into custody, the agent had been involved in a bizarre incident at the Musikverein. Along with almost a thousand other people, he’d experienced a hal
lucination while listening to a performance of Beethoven’s
Eroica
Symphony. To date, none of the investigators had offered a satisfactory explanation of what had occurred. Music could excite you or lull you into a state of extreme relaxation—but catapult you into a hyperreal fantasy of another time and place? Of another life lived and lost?

The press, both here and abroad, was still reporting the rumors that the occurrence was the result of a sonic anomaly that had caused a mass hypnotic past-life regression. Because he was a rationalist, the agent hoped the authorities testing the air in the music hall would discover there’d been a chemical attack. He preferred a black-and-white explanation and refused to accept that what he’d experienced during the concert was a memory of an earlier existence. Clearly his subconscious had manufactured a story in which people from the present played roles in an imagined past. There were hundreds of painkillers that caused delirium and delusions; his doctors had prescribed several of them for him when he was younger. Under the influence of narcotics, anything was possible.

A middle-aged man, carrying a string bag in one hand and a maroon umbrella in the other, hurried past, giving the agent only a cursory glance. Good. Everything about his demeanor and wardrobe was designed to disguise his involvement with law enforcement. The black shirt, jeans and leather jacket, the hair that fell over his collar—it was basically how he’d looked in college. The clothes just cost more now.

Stopping at number 122, an artless building identified as the Toller Archäologiegesellschaft—the Toller Archaeology Society—he rang the bell. Seconds later he was buzzed into a lobby where a middle-aged woman, wearing a wrinkled and shapeless navy dress, waited for him. Dr. Erika Alderman greeted him solemnly, then opened a second door that would have been in
visible from the street and ushered him deeper inside the building.

He’d met the doctor yesterday at the funeral for the man Malachai had traveled to Vienna to visit. Her grief had been palpable and the agent had refrained from asking her about the events of the past few days. It wasn’t the right time or place. Besides, was there really anything left to discover? Malachai had been watched from the minute he’d arrived in Vienna, and although he’d visited here three times, there was no indication he’d had anything to do with his colleague’s death. So the agent was surprised when, after the ceremony, Dr. Alderman had approached him and, in a hoarse whisper that sounded as if she’d been crying too hard for too long, requested that he come by before he left for America. She had something to show him.

As he followed her through the archway, under the carved letters on the frieze that revealed the brotherhood’s true designation, the change from ordinary exterior to extravagant interior was drastic. Leading him into the inner sanctum, she offered up some background. “The Memorist Society was secretly founded in 1809 to study the work of Austrian Orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, one of the men responsible for the greatest dissemination of Eastern knowledge in late-eighteenth-century Europe. Did you know that already?”

“I came across some information about the society in preparation for this trip, but I’m hardly an expert.”

“When we met you said you worked for the FBI, but you didn’t say you worked with art crimes.”

“No, I didn’t.” He wasn’t surprised she knew. His name and job description had appeared in far too many articles about the incident at the music hall. There were only eleven FBI agents in the Art Crime Team—ACT—and they made every effort to stay out of the press both overtly and in their covert identities.
A photo of one of them could blow a persona that had taken years to cultivate.

“Can you tell me about your unit?”

“We investigate the theft of objects from museums and residences, auction fraud and consignment fraud between galleries or dealers. We also help out with international requests to find works stolen abroad or artifacts looted from archaeological sites.”

“Which one of those brought you to Vienna?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

She nodded and went back to describing the architecture. “This is all original—the building and the decor. We’ve done some restoration, of course, but everything is as it was.”

They passed columns that stood like sentries and an Egyptian mural that covered an entire wall. Beneath their feet was a gemtoned carpet and above their heads was a cupola painted the cobalt of a night sky where stars—tiny mirrors that caught and reflected light from below—twinkled. Every corner was crammed with too many gleaming objects and artifacts for him to take them all in.

Alderman didn’t stop to introduce him to any of the society’s members, but he was aware that they were looking at him curiously, even suspiciously, and he pressed his upper arm against the gun in his shoulder holster.
His talisman.
Long ago he had given up looking for reassurance from the people in his life and had come to rely only on this inanimate object.

“Of specific interest to the society’s founders,” Alderman continued, “was reincarnation—a belief common to the newly discovered Hindu Shruti scriptures, teachings of the Kabbalah, mystery schools of ancient Egypt, Greek philosophers and Christian doctrine prior to the fifth century ACE. And this is our library,” she said as she reached the threshold, her timing perfect.

This room was smaller than the public spaces and, like them, was windowless. Wall sconces illuminated four walls of bookshelves crammed with volumes that gave off a slightly musty scent.

Shutting the door behind her, Dr. Alderman locked it with a key hanging from a gold chain around her neck. The tumblers clicked efficiently. When she tried the knob to make sure it was secured, he wondered if her paranoia was justified or an over-reaction to recent events.

“Have a seat, please,” she said, gesturing to a grouping of worn leather club chairs. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Water would be fine.”

The bar was ornately carved and well stocked with crystal decanters and heavy glasses that gleamed in the room’s soft lights. She filled a tall glass with water and then poured herself an inch of amber liquid. “I’d like to thank you for seeing me so late in the day,” Alderman said as she sat down opposite him. “I’ve just taken over as the head of the society, and there’s a lot to deal with rather quickly.”

He nodded and waited for her to continue, choosing not to tell her yet that he wanted to talk to her, too.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one, and then offered them to him. So many people in Vienna smoked it had made him rethink his abstinence. “I quit, but allow me…” he said as he reached into his pocket.

She lit her cigarette from the steady orange flame he offered. “If you quit, why carry the lighter?”

“To prove I’m the one in control of the habit, not the other way around.”

She smiled.

“So, how can I help you, Doctor?” he asked.

“Is it true the US is the world’s largest bazaar for stolen art?”

“One of them, yes.”

The combination of a largely unregulated marketplace, so many buyers anxious for a deal and so many unscrupulous sellers had created a four- to six-billion-dollar global industry that now fueled everything from terrorism to drug running.

“Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, art crime has become the third largest worldwide crime, following the drug trade and illicit arms deals,” he told her. “Dealers, collectors and academics who are less than stringent are, in effect, helping the terrorists now. At ACT we try as best we can to alert everyone, but…”

He hadn’t meant to lecture her, but it was precisely because people didn’t recognize the link between the removal and transport of cultural objects and the funding of terrorism that the crimes continued to increase at such alarming rates.

Raising awareness would help, but the last important article on the subject had been a 2006 op-ed in the
New York Times
written by Matthew Bogdanos, a colonel in the marine reserves who described how, during an Iraqi raid on terrorists in underground bunkers, marines had found automatic weapons, stockpiles of ammunition, ski masks, night-vision goggles and a cache of precious artifacts including vases, seals and statues. In the past ten years the trail of terrorists had led more and more to looted artwork. Antiquities were as valuable as drugs and often easier to transport and trade.

“You have a reputation for being very successful at recovery,” Dr. Alderman said as she put out her cigarette. “One of the most successful.” She stopped and sipped her drink as if she needed fortification. “That’s why I would like to hire you.”

“Thank you. But I’m already employed.”

“I am well aware of that. I’m not proposing to you that you quit your job. It is in fact precisely because of your FBI affilia
tion, as well as how closely you work with Interpol, that I am making this proposition.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t freelance, either.”

“Perhaps, then, our needs will overlap and by doing your job you’ll be able to help me do mine?”

“A much more likely scenario.”

She leaned forward and spoke sotto voce. “An ancient copper booklet that dates back to approximately 2000 BCE has been in the society’s possession for hundreds of years.”

He saw she was searching his face for a reaction. Not finding one, she continued. “Recently our historian came to believe it was a list of deep meditation aids that could help people access past-life memories.”

“Do you mean a list of Memory Tools?” He kept all intonation out of his voice and fought the urge to push her. The Malachai Samuels case he’d been working on for the past eighteen months, which had cost the bureau hundreds of thousands of dollars and had brought him to Vienna, centered on a cache of precious stones thought to be Memory Tools.

“Yes, we believe so. No one had ever been able to figure out what language it was written in or translate it until two years ago when our historian read an article about an archaeologist named Harshul Parva, who’d found the key to Harappan, a language used in the Indus Valley. Apparently, despite a large cache of writing samples from the Harappa mature period, which lasted from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE, there’d never been any developments in breaking the language.”

“Did Parva translate the list?”

“No, our historian wouldn’t let anyone else see it. But he did get help from Parva.”

“Was the list translated properly?”

“I don’t know.” Alderman paused to take another drink. “But
let’s assume it was. If you knew what was on the list and one of those items came on the market, you’d be in a position to identify it and let us know it had surfaced, yes?”

“Are you in possession of the list?”

Again he watched Alderman search his face, trying to gauge his interest. It was part of an agent’s training to learn how to hide emotions, but the last woman he’d lived with complained he’d learned too well. Gilly had told him once that all she ever saw reflected in his eyes were the room’s lights.
You’ve got a cat’s unblinking gaze,
she’d said.
Not a real cat, though: a small jade animal I once saw in a museum. Cold, precise, perfect—but a facsimile.
Her comment had stung because he feared it was the truth.

“Last night, after the funeral, I discovered that the booklet is missing from the vault,” Alderman said. “I’m hoping our historian secreted it away someplace even more secure and we’ll find it.”

“In case it’s been stolen, I’d like a detailed description so I can log it in with Interpol if you haven’t already reported it missing.”

She nodded. “I have the translation of the list, though. That wasn’t in the vault. Would you like to see it?” While Alderman opened her leather agenda, the library took on the immutable silence of a tomb. Pulling out a single sheet of paper, she put it on the table between them and then rested her right hand on top of it as if she were keeping it from blowing away even though the room was windowless.

“I never believed Memory Tools existed, even after a colleague of mine in New York, a well-respected reincarnationist, claimed to have found one of them,” she said. “But I do now and am prepared to offer you anything you want to help us find these.”

“Have you shown this to anyone?”
Like the reincarnationist from New York you just mentioned,
he wanted to ask but didn’t.

“No one. I’m fairly certain the only other living person who knows there even is a list is in jail and will be for a long time.”

“Dr. Alderman, if the tools listed here belonged to the society and have been stolen, both the FBI and Interpol need to know about it.”

“They haven’t been stolen because, as far as I know, they haven’t been found. At least, most of them haven’t.”

The list could be critically important to his investigation, he thought. It could mean the difference between going back to New York having failed and succeeding. His fingers inched forward. “May I see that?”