However, one man’s frosting is another’s meat and potatoes if certain decisions were made. But not tonight. Tonight he would linger in the memory of that supple elegance that flowed from her. By God, there were women he knew who could learn something from her. And then he thought of the last time he had been with Jacqueline. The fall bird shoot he had hosted at Burg Valdhof. It all seemed so horribly contrived now. But that was Jacqueline—contrived eroticism. All that sneaking around between midnight and dawn. He wondered if Jacqueline would even be vaguely orgasmic if her husband were not within one hundred meters or under the same roof. Well, in retrospect, or perhaps in comparison now, it all came off as arranged, as meticulously designed as Jacqueline’s clothes, her dinner parties, and everything else with which she furnished the vacant hours of her life. Just as a lot of other very rich, cosseted European women he knew, Jacqueline could and did spend enormous amounts of time on detail. There was an elaboration of domestic detail that indeed would defy the imagination of American women. Maidservants, at country houses, were sent out on bicycles into the countryside to gather seasonal varieties of grasses and wildflowers for floral compositions. Table designs were sketched in color weeks before dinner parties to show combinations of napery, silver, flowers, and china. All of this obsession with particulars became most honed in terms of the microcosmic arena of one’s own person.

  There was, of course, the designer clothes and the endless fittings. But there were more intimate details to attend to. For example, once every ten days Jacqueline submitted herself to the ministrations of a very well known electrolysis technician who maintained the heart- shaped contour of her pubic hair. Initially he had found it amusing and then merely forgotten about it. But now he had to laugh out loud. Good lord, he had just spent two glorious hours with a woman who very off-handedly had apologized for her unshaven legs. “But they work!” Calista had said. Indeed they did. For she was a bone lovely woman. He had told her that. And she had told him that there was a poem about a bone lovely woman. He had pleaded with her to recite it, but she had said she couldn’t remember it. He could tell she was embarrassed. Recite what you remember, he asked. So she had sat naked on the bed, her legs curled under her. She bit her lip gently, a mannerism he had noticed when she seemed to be reflecting, and then she began in the deep rather rough contralto voice, “ ‘I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, / When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; / Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: / The shapes a bright container can contain!’ ” She stopped. That was all she remembered. She was lying, but he would not press her. He simply asked the poet’s name. Tomorrow, after he called Berlin, he would go to a bookstore and find the book and read the rest of the poem.

  Chapter 18

  She would never know for sure whether it was a pure intuitive leap of thought or not. In many ways it was a chicken-and-egg question: which came first, the phone ring or that little intuitive synapsis that lit up her brain and sent Richter scale-like tremors through her, announcing trouble. She was still in bed when the phone rang at seven.

  “I’m not going to apologize for calling early,” the voice hissed. “Who is this? What time is it?” Calista fumbled for the clock. “It’s Diane Rudolf, and I would have called earlier except I was so outraged that I could hardly speak.”

  “What?”

  “What the fuck were you doing in Peter’s office yesterday?” “What are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Don’t deny it.” “I’m not denying anything. I was in Peter’s office.” Calista was fully awake now and sitting bolt upright in bed. She swore she would stay cool.

  “What exactly were you doing there?”

  “I was returning some papers that Peter had left at our house once, a computer analysis of sedimentary layers. I just wanted to compare dates against a set Tom had in his files. Fern Lopez, Tom’s secretary, and I are straightening out his files in the physics lab.” She was going to say that that was all there was to it, but she felt that would sound defensive. Let Diane do the defending. “I know you’re very upset now, Diane, and tired.”

  “I don’t want your goddamn sympathy and I don’t want you coming around Peter’s office anymore. It’s locked. No one is to have access except me!”

  “Diane, I don’t understand.” She heard some sniffling and then a little moan.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Calista. All this is so difficult. I’m very sorry I blew up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I... I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “It’s okay, Diane. Forget it.”

  “Oh, you know what it’s like.”

  She did. But she wasn’t sure Diane Rudolf really did. The sniffling, the little moan, the apology had all been conjured up at the last minute when she realized her anger had in a sense backfired—that there was no way for her to be both angry and convincingly grieved simultaneously.

  Calista looked out the bedroom window. The bare branches of the dogwood swung wildly in the wind. She could see the pale thin sun

  of late autumn struggling for a purchase on the day. No longer was there the luxury—luxury, she thought, had it ever been that?—the suspension through the night. But the night had ended. It was morning. Clear, windy, and full of people—scoundrels, heroes, and liars. And now she knew why Tom had gone to Rosestone. To catch a cheat.

  “He faked it.”

  “Faked what? Who?” Charley said sleepily as he stood in the hall on his way to the bathroom.

  “Gardiner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She had realized when she first saw the geomagnetic latitudes, the pattern in the Wyoming sets of figures and the lack of it in the Rosestone set, that she had begun to suspect that the site might have been seeded. She had heard of it happening before, archeologists planting artifacts from long-forgotten digs. It was just her goddamn tragic dumb luck to have had a husband who could prove it probably more conclusively than it ever had been proven before. It was this suspected variation in location of origin that had been his ostensible reason for going to Nevada after having worked with the Time Slicer almost exclusively in Wyoming. Ironic that it had been she who had barely looked at the lines and numbers, and not Charley, who had ultimately realized their significance. She looked at him now standing barefoot on the linoleum of the bathroom looking confused and cold and holding his toothbrush.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  It was strange. Charley had long ago exceeded Calista in his understanding of mathematical relationships. For him, the realm of mathematical logic was a brightly lit one. He performed within it, whether on the computer or propless in the pure environment of his own shimmering brain, with the ease and balance of a high-wire artist. And yet he still possessed at his core a bedrock innocence that made him ask her, almost accusingly, if she were sure. It had taken Calista, lurching about in some dim half light of her own rather primitive mathematical brain, to realize exactly what reality this pure language of mathematical symbols was describing—to come up with the meaning of the numbers and the patterns.

  She sat at Tom’s desk and twirled a stone nymph fly in her hand as she waited for her call to go through. It rang three times. “Dr.

  Archibald Baldwin, please.” She set the fly on its back so the hook and quills pointed up. “Dr. Baldwin, please; is he in? This is Calista Jacobs calling from Cambridge.”

  Chapter 19

  Calista decided to drive. There was no rush to get to Washington. Baldwin was out of town and wouldn’t be back until the next day. She needed time to think and driving would let her do that better than a shuttle flight. She and Charley pulled out of the drive after eleven. She had sent Charley to the Wine and Cheese Cask for sandwiches. She knew that by lunchtime they would be somewhere near Hartford. There was a complicated junction there involving Routes 86, 91, and 84. She figured if they stopped to eat she would get totally confused and wind up heading for Poughkeepsie, which she had done once before.

  They had just passed the first Framingham exit on the Mass Pike. “There’s a HoJo’s along here someplace. I want to stop.”

  “You already have to go to the bathroom, Mom?”

  "No. I want to make a phone call.”

  “That guy?”

  “Yeah.” She turned to Charley. “Why do you always call him ‘that guy’? His name is Werner.”

  “ ‘Werner’! Sounds like a burnt hotdog. Why’d his parents call him Werner?”

  Calista laughed. “It’s a common name in Germany like John or Bill.”

  “You in love with him?”

  “Good grief, no, Charley!”

  “You don’t want to marry him?”

  “Charley, why would you ever think that?” She turned toward him briefly. She shouldn’t be so amazed. Wasn’t this rather typical? Wouldn’t she be scared if she were in Charley’s shoes? She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Charley,” she said, looking straight down the pike, “even if I were in love with him I wouldn’t get married. Daddy was the best, and after you’ve had the best why bother with second rate?” She paused, and thought to herself—at least for marriage.

  A HoJo’s appeared and Calista exited. Charley waited in the car while she went in to phone. The Ritz operator connected her. It rang twice before he picked it up. When she first heard his voice she felt a small warm sensation within her, not as strong as the previous night, more like a warm shadow from that night’s sun.

  “Hi. It’s Calista.”

  “Good morning darling.” She melted a bit inside.

  “You’ll never guess where I am.”

  “Downstairs I hope.”

  “Nope. Not even close. Give up?”

  “Give up.”

  “I’m somewhere near the Framingham exit on the Mass Pike, calling from the orange and turquoise splendors of one of America’s dearest institutions.”

  “What is this?” He laughed. “Seriously where are you?” “Seriously I’m here at HoJo’s—Howard Johnson’s.”

  “Howard who?”

  “Johnson. Don’t be jealous. He’s very nice. Dresses terribly. I mean, orange and turquoise! His ice cream’s okay, but the fried clams forget it.” Von Sackler was laughing by now.

  “And I don’t think he’d be half as good in the sack as you are.” “Calista! You’re outrageous.” He was laughing hard now.

  “No. It’s true and I’ve got to talk fast ’cause I’m calling from a pay phone.”

  “Give me the number and I’ll call you back.”

  “No, I’ve got a bunch of quarters. Remember I’m one of those aggressive, efficient, liberated ...”

  “ . . . take-charge American women that I’ve heard so much about.”

  “You got it,” Calista said.

  “I loved the way you took charge of me last night.”

  “Don’t talk dirty on the phone, Werner. The FCC will get us.” He was still laughing. “Okay. Now tell me darling, what are you doing at exit whatever it is with Howard Whomever?”

  “I’m on my way to Washington with Charley. I can’t explain it all over the phone, but I’ve figured out something about Peter Gardiner.” “What’s that?” His voice was suddenly taut and icy.

  “It’s hard to talk about it on the phone, and besides I’m not absolutely sure. That’s why I’m going to see this guy at the Smithsonian.”

  “What have you figured out, Calista?” The voice seemed almost stern now. The operator broke in saying three minutes was up. “Just a minute.” Calista put in some more quarters.

  “Werner, I think Peter Gardiner seeded the site with artifacts from somewhere else.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Probably to get more funding from National Geographic, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, and God knows where else. I think, you know, he probably had this idea, this projection about Rosestone and it just kind of bottomed out on him -—literally. It happens, and like a lot of scientists he just couldn’t give up the dream. So he forces it into some kind of reality.” She stopped there.

  “Yes. Yes. Of course. Uh . . . it’s rather shocking isn’t it?” “Yeah, I know, and I’m not absolutely sure, but I’ve got to find out.”

  “But you feel that this would have provided a motive for him to get rid of your husband?”

  “Yes.” She spoke softly. “See, the Time Slicer could have proven the area was seeded. I just have to find out.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Werner? You still there?”

  “Yes.” He paused again and then spoke slowly. “You feel, Calista, that the sole reason Tom went out there with the Time Slicer was to prove Gardiner a fraud?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I don’t think there could have been another.”

  “Well, do be careful, Calista.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “Just be careful, dear. That’s all.”

  “Werner, do me a favor. Don’t mention my name to Diane Rudolf today.”

  “Do you think she’s involved?”

  “Not directly, but she’ll certainly want to protect Peter’s good name, and it’s too long to go into right now but she’s ticked off at me for going into Peter’s office.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Dropping off papers of course.”

  “Of course.” He laughed.

  “Listen, I nearly forgot, I left a key under the green trash can in our shed. Could you take in our papers and mail for me on your way over to the Peabody? Like to fool the robbers, you know.”

  “Of course.” He paused.

  “But what were you doing in Peter’s office? Time slicing?”

  “A tad.”

  “My, you’re a busy lady!”

  “Aggressive, efficient ...”

  "... take-charge American woman. Tell me darling, when are you going to take charge of me again?”

  She laughed deeply. “Just as soon as I can get my hands on you!” Lucky she hadn’t said “it” Calista thought as she walked back to the car carrying two peppermint-stick ice creams.

  Chapter 20

  Von Sackler hung up the phone. A simple, containable assignment was becoming more complicated. Twelve hours ago he was convinced that indeed what she had said in the Ritz bar that night was true. That ninety-nine percent of what her husband was doing she did not understand. But if she started running off to Washington with fantasies of solving his “murder” (even Gauss was not sure it had been murder) she might lower the percentage and in inverse proportion increase her own risk. He had thought, thought hell! He had counted on her being manageable. And when people became unmanageable, well, the agency had very little patience with such situations. Gauss even less. And Gauss was determined to do a good job for Washington.

  Von Sackler had always in the past managed to avoid any of their messy cowboy-and-Indian stuff. The closest he had come to actually having to do anything was “deliver” the British mole, by invitation, for an evening of unusual sex at a rather exclusive club in Paris. It was a bit too unusual. The fellow wound up dying in a decidedly obscene manner. The British and kinky sex were becoming “practically caricature presences” in politics according to the British agent in the foreign office who masterminded the plan. That of course was what had made the method so handy. But it had come directly from 10 Downing Street that the “investigation” would be discreet in deference to the man’s family.

  Von Sackler had hated the whole business even though he had been able to maintain a comfortable distance. Now what would happen if he were called upon again? And of course there was another complicating factor—the son. It was not a question of one person knowing too much, but two. Von Sackler sat on his bed and looked directly out the window at the public gardens. The assignment was so simple: the subjects—a mother who was a children’s book illustrator, fairy tales of all things, and her son. They were both virtually ignorant. Why did he have this dreadful sense that things were about to unravel on him?

  Chapter 21

  She had made reservations at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington. The only other hotel she knew about was the Mayflower and all she knew about that was that J. Edgar Hoover had eaten lunch there every day, which did not make it appealing to Calista on any level. Whereas she thought she had remembered Tom mentioning the Jefferson, and if one picked hotels strictly on a name basis she felt that the Jefferson might offer more than the Mayflower in terms of style and comfort.

  She was not disappointed. The small lobby, a neoclassical sanctum, was reflective of the South’s preoccupation with things Greek. There were Doric-columned spaces with cornices and elegant moldings bearing the cool decoration characteristic of the neoclassical fascination with plane, surface, and symmetry. It was dignified as opposed to opulent elegance. Leona Helmsley would not have been found here, Calista thought. Desk clerks spoke in low voices and called guests by name—“Mrs. Jacobs, we’ve been expecting you and your son.”

  After checking in Calista and Charley followed the bellhop toward a conflagration of tiger lilies that stood on a black marble table toward the rear of the lobby. They turned right and entered a small wood- paneled elevator.

  “Where’s the TV?” Charley asked as they entered their room.

  “In the bedroom,” the bellhop replied.

  “What’s this?”

  “The sitting room.”

  “Oh.” Calista frowned. “I just wanted a twin-bedded room. Is this more expensive?”