The Fortune Teller(74)

“Your father left me a note inside it.” She could see the shock on his face. So Theo hadn’t known.

She began to pace as the words spilled out of her. “I made a copy in secret. The night before I flew home, someone broke into my hotel and found the file. Then a man followed me back to New York.” She turned to him. “I saw him at the library the exact moment Ionna warned me. It was like she knew, she saw me, and now…” She fought to retain control.

“Have you read it all?” Theo asked, taking a step toward her.

“Everything but the missing pages. You took them out, didn’t you?”

“I had to,” he admitted.

Semele stared at him in disbelief, unable to stop herself from erupting. “Why? It’s a priceless manuscript!” She waved her hands around and yelled, “You don’t just take a surgical knife to two-thousand-year-old parchment!”

“I had to!” Theo raised his voice too, matching her passion. “I couldn’t risk anyone else reading those pages but you.” He tried to explain. “I was planning to give you the rest before the auction. I wanted to give you time to come to terms with what Ionna had written. But I can see now that wasn’t the best course.” He rubbed his eyes, clearly tortured.

Just hearing him say Ionna’s name, as if he knew her, made Semele’s anger dissipate. She sat down on the couch and tried to calm down. “Your father gave my father a copy of the manuscript.”

He appeared momentarily stunned. It seemed Marcel had kept secrets too.

“My father translated it.” She pulled out Joseph’s copy from her purse and showed it to him. “They were planning to meet the week he died.”

Theo digested the news. It was clear he hadn’t known. “I think it’s best if you read the rest of the pages first,” he said. “Then I’ll explain everything.”

Semele wondered what the pages contained that made him feel he had to defile the manuscript. She needed to tell him everything. “I have Ionna’s cards … had them,” she amended.

“You found the cards?” He looked taken aback.

“My grandmother left them for me. I gave them to a friend yesterday so he could examine them.” Her voice began to quiver, but she had to let him know. “He was in an accident last night and the cards were stolen. He…” She couldn’t go on.

Theo blanched at the news. He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her. The simple gesture was so thoughtful it made her cry more.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Should I go to the police?”

Theo seemed to be measuring his words. “I’m afraid these people are beyond the police.”

“Who?” A heady rush of fear hit her. “Who are they?”

Theo walked to the metal attaché case on the table. He unlocked both electronic locks, scanning his fingerprint on a built-in thumb-pad. The case clicked open and he took out a folder and handed it to her. “I’ll order up lunch and coffee while you read. The table is cleared for you in the den.”

He had prepared the table for her, which meant he had already planned to bring her up here. What else had Theo Bossard been planning?

Semele felt as though she were being whiplashed, unsure of anything except that she had to read the pages. Without a word she went into the den and shut the door.

Her eyes stung from exhaustion and she couldn’t fathom the idea of having to decipher more Greek, but sleep wasn’t an option. She ducked into the bathroom to wash her hands so she could handle the parchment. Then she sat down on the couch and opened the folder.

Touching the leaves of the original manuscript again revived her and helped to bring her thoughts into focus. She hadn’t read from the actual pages since she was in Switzerland.

Ionna’s handwriting leaped from the page; every brushstroke was a living memory in motion. Semele traced her finger over the symbols with a feather-light touch and imagined Ionna at her desk, writing this to her—because Semele knew that Ionna had written this to her. And why Theo felt these pages had to be protected above all else was a mystery she was about to solve.

She opened her father’s copy to the same page. He had translated Ionna’s story word for word, and she could feel him with her. She wasn’t sure she would have had the courage to know what happened to Nettie without him.





From Leningrad Nettie went to Gorky by train with other prisoners. She had special papers tagged to her coat like a package. Her final destination paralyzed her with fear. She heard murmurs among the officers that Germany had broken their treaty and invaded Russia. Gorky was the country’s military center. Why were they sending her there?

On the journey no one offered her food or water or a word of explanation. The other prisoners were too afraid to speak. There was a silent consensus among them: if everyone followed orders, this misunderstanding would be rectified and life could return to normal, because none of them deserved to be arrested.

At the train station in Gorky, a cluster of KGB and military personnel waited to take the prisoners that had been assigned to them. A KGB officer looked at Nettie’s papers and gave her a sharp appraisal. She moved to fall in line with the others, but he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Not you,” he said and led her to an army truck. He ordered her to climb into the back.