I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head...

W. B. Yeats, 'The Song of the Wandering Aengus'

Yeats's Aengus...had the fire in his head that shamans everywhere believe is their source of enlightenment, illuminating visions of other realities. The shamanic journey begins and ends in the mind...

Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head.

Koryakskoe Rayirin Yayai.

(House of the Drum, Land of the Koryak).

Within the yurt, the shaman was drumming softly as the others sat in a circle around the fire and chanted in the beautiful rhythms that Aleksandr had come to love. He sat outside the tent flap and listened. He loved the sounds of the shamans for they tranquilized his thoughts, creating a kind of harmonic that seemed to flow through his body and helped to heal his frayed and damaged nerves.

But often, when these rhythms stopped, the fire would return: the fire that filled his head with that burning light, that searing pain not physical, more like something that emanated from within his psyche.

He had no real sense of time yet, either. He was unsure of how long he'd been here a few days, maybe a week or more or of how long they'd traveled to reach this place, all that distance across miles of seemingly impenetrable taiga. Toward the end of the journey, when his newly seasoned legs had failed him in the snows, when he'd become too weak to keep up the pace, they'd sent the sled with dogs to bring him the rest of the way.

The dogs were wonderful. He remembered what they were called: Samoyeds. He'd watched them with interest as they'd bounded through the snowy fields before the sled. When they were unleashed from the harness at night, he'd embraced them, and they'd licked his hands and face. Had he had a dog like this when he was young?

But he was no longer that boy, young Sascha, the self he knew best, the only self he really knew at all. He was now a grown man who remembered so little, his past seemed a foreign land, even unto himself. She'd told him his name.

Aleksandr Solarin.

And the woman who'd brought him here the lovely blond woman who sat beside him now, waiting outside the tent for the others to call them when they were ready for the healing she was his mother, Tatiana.

Before they'd first set out on this mission, she'd told him what she could about his state. 'At the beginning,' she said, 'you were in a coma, you did not move, you could hardly breathe. The chief shaman, the Etugen, came down from the north to a.s.sist in your healing in the mineral waters. She is the one whom the Chukchi call qacikechca "similar to a man" a female shaman from the aboriginal line, the enenilit, those with the spirit, those with great power. But despite all the strong herbs and skilled techniques the elders had employed to heal your flesh, the Etugen said you would only recover your spirit if you could begin the crossing the journey from the people of the dead, the Peninelau, to the place of the living through the effort of your own will.

'After a very long time, you came to that state that we would call a stupor, although sometimes, for a month or longer, you still moved in and out of consciousness. At last, you've become as you are now, aware and conscious, able to eat, walk, read, even speak in several languages but these are all skills that you possessed in your early youth. We must expect the rest to return more slowly, for you have had a great shock.

'The Etugen says that yours is not only a wound of the flesh, but of the spirit. It is dangerous to probe this psychic wound while it is still healing already it comes to you in flashes. You are sometimes attacked by sleeplessness, a kind of seizure of distress or hysteria caused by what may seem irrational fears. But the Etugen believes these fears are real that we must permit the true cause of your trauma to surface naturally, despite how long it may require and as difficult as it may seem.

'Then, when your flesh is well enough for you to make the physical part of the journey,' she added, 'we will head toward the north, to begin that other journey of healing your soul. For you have lived among the dead, you have the fire in your head you have pa.s.sed the tests to become a hetolatigiu "one-looking-into" a prophet shaman.'

But Solarin knew in despair that all he wanted was his life back. As more of his memories returned, bit by bit, the more hopeless he felt at how much he'd really lost of all those intervening blank years. He could not even remember how many of them there were, that he was unble to remember. Bitterest of all to him now, he couldn't access the contents of his memory couldn't recall those whom he'd loved or hated, cursed or cherished.

Yet there was one thing he could remember.

The game of chess.

Whenever he thought of it especially of one game in particular the fire began to rise in his head again. He knew that something about that game must be the key to it all: all his lost memory, all the traumas and nightmares, the hopes and fears.

But he knew, too, that just as his mother and the shaman had advised, it was best to watch and wait. For by pressing too hard and fast to grasp those cherished memories, he might be in the greater danger of killing the golden goose and losing it all.

Along their journey to the north, whenever they'd reached a stopping place where they could speak, he would tell his mother whatever he'd been able to remember, some small vapor, something rising like a mist from his past.

For instance, that night when he was a child, when Tatiana had given him a gla.s.s of warm milk and put him to bed. He could see his bedroom with the fig tree just outside. It was somewhere near the cliffs and the sea. It was raining. They'd had to flee. This much he'd remembered all on his own. The first memory a great sense of accomplishment and release.

And now as they went, Tatiana like a painter filling color into a drawing that was as yet only half-sketched on the canvas would share more details of whatever she could retrieve for him from this part of his life.

'That night you recalled is important,' she told him. 'It was in late December of 1953 the night when all our lives changed. That night in the rain, our grandmother Minnie arrived at our house, which lay along a wild, spa.r.s.ely occupied stretch of coast on the Black Sea. Though part of the Soviet Union, this spot was a sheltered oasis far from the terrors and purges elsewhere or so we believed. Minnie brought with her something that our family, across many generations, had always vowed to protect.'

'I do not recall her,' said Solarin, though with stirring excitement, for he'd just had another glimmer. 'But I remember more of that night. Men broke into our house; I ran out and hid on the cliff. I somehow escaped. But you were captured by those men-' He looked at his mother in shock. 'I never saw you again until that day at the monastery!'

Tatiana nodded and said, 'Minnie had chosen that moment to arrive with a treasure she'd spent eight months scouring Russia to locate. For just eight months earlier, Yusuf Stalin who'd ruled Russia for twenty-five years with a fist of steel had died. In those ensuing months after his death, the entire world had changed for better or worse: Iraq, Jordan, and England had all gained new young rulers. Russia had developed the hydrogen bomb. And only shortly before that night of Minnie's arrival at our house, the longtime head of the Soviet secret police Lavrentii Beria, the most feared and hated man in Russia was executed before a firing squad. Indeed, Stalin's death and the vacuum it left was what had prompted Minnie's frantic eight-month search to excavate as much as she could of the hidden treasure three valuable gold and silver, bejeweled chess pieces, which she begged us to hide. She believed we were safe to do so, with a boat nearby at your father's disposal.'

At the mention of the chess pieces, Solarin had felt the fire returning. He struggled to hold it back. There was something else he had to know. 'Who were those men who captured you?' he asked, his voice shaking. 'And how did you manage to disappear for so long?'

Tatiana did not answer directly. 'It has always been easy to disappear in Russia,' she said calmly. 'Millions did so, if rarely by choice.'

'But if the old regime was dismantled,' said Solarin, 'who were those men who were after the treasure? Who captured you? And where did they take you?'

'The usual place,' said Tatiana. 'The Glavny Upravlenie Lagerey, the Main Administration for Camps "Gulag" for short those forced labor camps that have existed since the time of the tsars. The "Administration" it refers to is always the secret police, whether called Okhrana under Tsar Nikolas, or under the Soviets the Chekha, the NKVD, the KGB.'

'You were put into a prison camp?' Solarin said, astonished. 'But how in G.o.d's name did you manage to survive all that time? I was only a small boy when they took you!'

'I should not have survived,' Tatiana told him. 'But after little more than a year, Minnie at last discovered where I'd been taken, to a camp in Siberia. A place of desolation. And she bartered for my escape.'

'She secured your release, you mean?' said Solarin. 'But how?'

'No, my escape,' said his mother. 'For if the politburo had ever learned of my release, all of our lives would have remained in danger all these many years. Minnie bought my freedom in another way, and for quite another reason. I have remained here, hidden among the Koryak and Chukchi ever since. Thanks to this, I was not only able to rescue your broken body, but to save you, too, for I hold many powers myself that I've acquired over many years from these great masters of the fire.'

'But how did you rescue me,' Solarin asked his mother, 'and what did Minnie give the Soviets or the Gulag guards to effect your escape?'

But before the last question was out of his mouth, Solarin knew the answer. In horror he suddenly saw, with the force of brilliant illumination, the glimmering shape that had hovered at the periphery of his vision all these many months.

'Minnie gave them the Black Queen!' he cried.

'No,' said Tatiana. 'Minnie gave them the chessboard. It was I myself who gave them the Black Queen.'

Jihad.

The conquest of Spain and Africa by Islam had made the king of the Franks the master of the Christian Occident. It is therefore strictly correct to say that without Mohammed Charlemagne would have been inconceivable.

Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne.

Sage Livingston, Rodo Boujaron, and Monsieur 'Charlemagne d'Anagram' himself, my suspicious new Colorado neighbor, Galen March. These were the very last folks on the planet I wanted to see at this precise moment, especially en ma.s.se like this, with me half-naked. I felt like gagging. But I managed to pull on my plush velour robe and knot the sash, the only thing I could think to do when confronted by this unexpected trio of mismatched coconspirators.

Nim had stepped from the steamy Roman bath and tugged his arms into his own robe. With one deft sweep, he plucked Key's fax from my hand, shoved it back into his pocket, and handed me a towel for my dripping hair.

He muttered from the side of his mouth, 'You're acquainted with these people, I take it?' When I merely nodded, he added, 'Then timely introductions might prove to be in order.'

But our Charm School Queen beat me to it.

'Alexandra!' Sage exclaimed, crossing the s.p.a.ce to me with the two men in tow. 'How astonishing to find you here at the same hotel where Galen himself is staying. He and I were searching all of Georgetown for you until your employer here was kind enough to point us in the right direction; it was he who suggested you might be visiting your uncle at the Four Seasons.'

Before I could respond or react to this startling remark, Sage had turned her charms upon Nim, extending one flawlessly manicured hand and bestowing an even more polished smile. 'And you must be Dr Ladislaus Nim, the noted scientist of whom we've all heard so much. I'm Sage Livingston, Alexandra's neighbor from Colorado. Delighted to meet you.'

Heard so much of Nim? The Man of Mystery himself? Hardly from Mother or me. And just how could Rodo pin down our whereabouts so fast, without the use of those bugging devices I thought we'd just ditched?

Nim was shaking hands all around, as dignified as one could be in such attire. At this moment, however, I was cold and dripping not to mention more than desperate to figure out the rest of Key's fax about Mother still stashed in my uncle's pocket. I decided to excuse myself and head for the locker room to dry off, in hopes I might escape by a back door and follow up with Nim on these and other questions.

But our 'Hostess with the Mostest,' it would appear, had yet another surprise up her sleeve.

'Dr Nim,' Sage was saying, in a sultry sotto voce, 'surely you, of all people, must know just who we all are, and why we're all here. So you must understand, as well, why we must speak and why time is of the essence.'

Who we all are?

I tried not to glance at my uncle. But really what gave here?

Sage was sounding less like the pretentious bit of fluff of my longtime acquaintance and a bit more like Mata Hari. Was it actually possible that the Sage standing before me right now, the one mindlessly toying with her diamond tennis bracelet and pouting, could be heiress to more than just the Livingston oil fields and uranium mines? Might she be heiress to all those intriguing Livingston intrigues as well?

But just as that unbidden thought about Sage had done its best to bite me from behind, the shade of her mother reared its unattractive head. Exactly whom do you believe you are dealing with? Rosemary had asked me that night at the restaurant. Do you have any possible conception of who I am?

I decided at least under these cold, wet circ.u.mstances that it was time to blow the whistle. I'd definitely had enough.

'What exactly do you mean,' I asked Sage in irritation, 'that Nim must know "Who We Are"? Let's see... reading from left to right, you all look a lot like my uncle, my boss, and a couple of my mother's neighbors-'

I paused, for Sage, completely ignoring me, had sighed with understated elegance, lips pressed together and nostrils slightly flared. Glancing meaningfully toward the reception desk, she whispered directly to Nim, 'Isn't there someplace we can go and speak privately, the five of us? Just as soon, of course, as you and Alexandra have had time to dry off and change. You must know very well what we need to discuss.'

I was about to object, but Nim took me by surprise. 'My room. Ten minutes,' he told her, nodding to the gang of three. Then he tore a bit of paper from the piece in his pocket and scribbled his room number down.

What on earth was he thinking? He knew better than anyone that my mother was in danger maybe right here in D.C. that I had to get out of here now. And yet we were fraternizing once more with the enemy, about to throw another extended tea party. I was really fuming.

When Nim hit the lockers, I doubled back quickly and grabbed Sage by the arm.

Galen and Rodo were already well ahead, halfway up the stairs to the athletic club's private entrance and hopefully out of earshot of my questions. But the moment I began, I found I'd been corked up so long that when uncorked, I just couldn't seem to stop.

'Who called this meeting?' I demanded of Sage. 'Was it you or Tom and Jerry up there? Why were you and March looking "all over Georgetown" for me today? What are you both doing in Washington, anyway? Why did you both race down to Denver last Sunday just after I'd left? What did you have to talk about with Vartan Azov and Lily Rad?'

It was clearly no secret that I knew all this Rosemary had already let the cat out of the bag that she knew I'd had a report from Nokomis Key.

Now Sage coolly regarded me with that lofty, condescending expression that had always filled me with the desire to wipe it off her face with a Brillo pad. Then she smiled, and the familiar Miss Popularity returned, doublebarreled dimples and all.

'You really ought to ask your uncle those questions not me,' she told me sweetly. 'After all, he's agreed we would all meet. It's only ten minutes from now, as he's just said.'

Sage started up the stairs once more, but again I grabbed her by the arm. She looked at me in shocked surprise. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! I was surprising even myself. I must have been nearly snarling in her face in my frustration.

Maybe I'd never shown my true colors toward Sage before, but from my perspective this had been a pretty rough week, even before it received any help from her and her awful family. Besides, I was in no mood to get the brush-off from a girl whose entire prior accomplishment in life, so far as I knew, was to be a card-carrying Teen G.o.ddess. People were in danger. I needed information. Now.

'You're here. We're alone. I'm asking you,' I told her. 'What would be the advantage in waiting ten more minutes to ask my uncle something you could tell me right away?'

'I was only trying to help, after all,' said Sage. 'It's your uncle we've come to meet with, as you must realize. Galen insisted we had to find him. He said it was urgent. That's why we went to Denver to question the others after your mother came up missing at that party. And when even you didn't seem to have a clue where she had gone-'

She cut off when I'd glanced around quickly to see if anyone could overhear us. This was more than I'd expected. Galen March was hunting for Nim? But why? I was almost in shock.

Then I looked up the long flight of stairs and saw that Galen himself was headed back down them, coming right toward us. I panicked and dragged Sage into the ladies' locker room where he could hardly follow. Still holding her by the arm, I checked under the stall doors to be certain we were completely alone.

When I turned back to Sage, I was nearly panting with antic.i.p.ation. I knew I had to ask the question though I confess I was genuinely terrified to hear what her answer might be. Sage was staring at me as if I might start frothing at the mouth. I would have laughed if the situation hadn't been quite so grave.

As Key would say, I bit the bullet.

'Why would Galen March be chasing after my uncle?' I asked. 'After all, they'd never met each other, until just moments ago, in this club.'

Right?

'I never really inquired,' said Sage with her customary sangfroid.

She was treading carefully, no doubt, so as not to excite me more than necessary, though I noticed that she was eyeing the nearby fire alarm box, as if contemplating how hard it might be to break the gla.s.s and pull the handle to summon help.

I was about to press further, but Sage hadn't finished. With her next words, I nearly blacked out.

'I just a.s.sumed they must know each other. After all, it was your uncle who put up the money to purchase Sky Ranch.'

I had never before studied my uncle through the bottom of a brandy snifter, but I'd accepted this stiff belt he'd proffered the moment I'd arrived, wet and bedraggled, from the club.

Now, dried off and dressed in the fresh change of clothes he'd earlier stuffed into my backpack, I was peering through the gla.s.s as I sipped the last of my cognac, curled barefoot in a comfy chair behind one of those exotic flower arrangements the Four Seasons is famous for. I tried to remember their names: the orange and purple were birds of paradise, the green and white were yucca plants, the fuschia were wild ginger, the plum were cymbidiums...or was it cymbidia? I'd never been much at Latin.

Nim came around the table and removed the gla.s.s from my hand. 'That's quite enough for one morning,' he informed me. 'I want you relaxed, not comatose. Why don't you pull up your chair and join the group?'

The group.

He was referring to the motley trio seated on rich brocade chairs that were scattered about the lavish suite. Nim padded back and forth over the luxurious carpeting, fixing them drinks of their own.

I really couldn't believe all this was happening.

I felt truly ill, and that cognac had hardly helped relieve my confusion or pain.

I knew I somehow had to get to the bottom of things. But for the first time I felt completely and utterly alone.

Thank G.o.d I'd done those thirty laps in the pool today, before reality set in.

Thank G.o.d I'd pinched Key's fax from Nim's robe in the bathroom just now.

Because my beloved uncle Slava the one person I'd always trusted with my confidences and my life, more even than my own parents now appeared to have a ton of explaining to do. At this point, I wasn't sure how much he could just explain away. After all, as my mother used to say when I was a child, 'A lie by omission is still a lie.'

As he'd requested, I pulled my chair from behind the table of flowers to 'join the group,' and I seized this opportunity for a quick mental recap.

How much fact or speculation had I myself shared with Nim since last night?

How much of his input was a 'lie by omission' versus actual commission?