Leaning heavily upon his cane, Grigori hobbled to Vladimir. “Tell me,” he said. “Where is she?”
Percival leaned close to Vladimir, so that he could see the purple pouches under Percival’s eyes, thick as bruises on his white skin. His teeth were perfectly even, so white they seemed plated in pearl. And yet Percival was aging-a net of fine lines had developed about his mouth. He must have reached at least three hundred years.
“I remember you,” Percival said, narrowing his eyes as if comparing the man before him with one in his memory. “You were in my presence in Paris. I recall your face, although time has changed you almost beyond recognition. You helped Gabriella to deceive me.”
“And you,” Vladimir said, recovering his equilibrium, “betrayed everything you believed in-your family, your ancestors. Even now you haven’t forgotten her. Tell me: How badly do you miss Gabriella Lévi-Franche?”
“Where is she?” Percival said, staring into Vladimir’s eyes.
“That I will never tell you,” Vladimir said, his voice catching as he spoke. He knew that with those words he had chosen to die.
Percival released the ivory-headed cane from his grip. It fell to the floor, sending a sharp echo through the church. He placed his long, cold fingers upon Vladimir’s chest, as if to feel his heartbeat. An electrical vibration surged through Vladimir, shattering his ability to think. In the last minutes of his life, his lungs burning for air, Vladimir was drawn into the horrifying translucency of his killer’s eyes. They were pale and ringed with red, intense as a chemical fire stabilized in a frozen atmosphere.
As Vladimir’s consciousness dissolved, he remembered the delicious sensation of the lyre’s body, heavy and cool in his hands, and how he had longed to hear its ethereal melody.
Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink, Fifth Avenue, New York City
Evangeline glanced at the rink, following the skaters’ slow, circular progress. Colored lights fell upon the glossy surface of the ice, skittering under blades and disappearing in the shadows. In the distance a tremendous Christmas tree rose against a solid gray building, its red and silver lights glinting like a million fireflies captured in a glass cone. Rows of majestic herald angels, their wings delicate and white as lily petals, stood below the tree like a legion of sentries, their wire bodies illuminated, their elongated brass trumpets raised in choral praise to the heavens. The shops along the concourse-bookstores and clothing stores, stationery shops and chocolatiers-had begun to close, sending customers into the night with gifts and shopping bags tucked under their arms.
Pulling her overcoat close, Evangeline wrapped herself in a cocoon of warmth. She cradled the cold metal casket-the crossbars of the lyre tucked safely inside-in her hands. At her side, Bruno Bechstein and Alistair Carroll scanned the masses beyond the rink. Hundreds and hundreds of people filled the plaza. “White Christmas” played through a tiny overhead speaker, its melody punctuated by laughter from the skating rink. Fifteen minutes remained until the designated meeting time, and the others were nowhere to be found. The air was crisp, smelling of snow. Evangeline inhaled, and a fit of coughing overtook her. Her lungs were so tight she could hardly breathe. What had begun as simple discomfort in her chest had grown in the past hours to a full-blown hack. Each breath she took felt labored, giving her only the slightest bit of air.
Alistair Carroll removed his scarf and placed it gently around Evangeline’s collar. “You are freezing, my dear,” he said. “Protect yourself from this wind.”
“I’ve hardly noticed it,” Evangeline said, drawing the thick, soft wool about her neck. “I’m too worried to feel anything. The others should be here by now.”
“It was at this time of year that we came to Rockefeller Center with the fourth piece of the lyre,” Alistair said. “Christmas 1944. I drove Abby here in the middle of the night and helped her through a terrible storm. Luckily, she had the foresight to call the security personnel herself, informing them that we would be coming. Their assistance proved most useful.”
“So you are aware of what is hidden here?” Bruno said. “You’ve seen it?”
“Oh, yes,” Alistair said. “I packed the tuning pegs of the lyre into the protective case myself. It was quite an ordeal, finding a case that would allow us to hide the pegs here, but Abby was certain that this was the best place. I carried the case in my own hands and assisted Mrs. Rockefeller in locking it away. The pegs are tiny, and so the case is merely the weight of a pocket-watch without its fob. It is so very compact that one cannot conceive that it could hold something so essential to the instrument. But it is a fact: The lyre will not produce a note without the pegs.”
Evangeline tried to imagine the small knobs, envisioning how they fit onto the crossbar. “Do you know how to reassemble it?” Evangeline asked.
“Like all things, there is an order one must follow,” Alistair said. “Once the crossbar is fitted into the arms of the lyre’s base, the strings must be wound about the tuning pegs, each at a certain tension. The difficulty, I believe, is in the tuning of the lyre, a skill that requires a trained ear.”
Directing their attention to the angels collected before the Christmas tree, he added, “I assure you that the lyre looks nothing at all like the stereotypical instruments held by the herald angels. The wire angels at the base of the Christmas tree were introduced to Rockefeller Center in 1954, one year after Philip Johnson completed the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and ten years after the treasure’s interment here. Although these lovely creatures’ appearance here was purely coincidental-Mrs. Rockefeller had passed away by then, and nobody, save myself, knew about what had been hidden here-I find the symbolism rather exquisite. It is fitting, this collection of heralds, wouldn’t you say? One feels it the moment one enters the plaza at Christmastime: Here is the treasure of the angels, waiting to be uncovered.”
“The case was not placed near the Christmas tree?” Evangeline asked.
“Not at all,” Alistair replied, gesturing to the statue at the far end of the skating rink, where the statue of Prometheus rose above the rink, its smooth gilded-bronze surface wrapped in light. “The case is part of the Prometheus statue. There it lies, in its gilded prison.”
Evangeline studied the sculpture of Prometheus. It was a soaring figure that appeared to be caught in midair. The fire stolen from the hearth of the gods blazed in his tapering fingers, and a bronze ring of the zodiac encircled his feet. Evangeline knew the myth of Prometheus well. After stealing fire from the gods, Prometheus was punished by Zeus, who bound him to a rock and sent an eagle to peck at his body for eternity. Prometheus’s punishment was equated with his crime: The gift of fire marked the beginning of human innovation and technology, harkening the gods’ growing irrelevance.
“I have never seen the statue up close,” Evangeline said. In the light of the skating rink, the skin of the sculpture appeared molten. Prometheus and the fire he’d stolen were one incendiary entity.
“It is no masterpiece,” Alistair said. “Nevertheless, it suits Rockefeller Center perfectly. Paul Manship was a friend of the Rockefeller family’s-they knew his work well and commissioned him to create the sculpture. There is more than a passing reference to my former employers in the myth of Prometheus-their ingenuity and ruthlessness, their trickery, their dominance. Manship knew that these references would not be lost on John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had used all his influence to build Rockefeller Center during the Great Depression.”