The Reincarnationist

He let the book fall open to the soft leather bookmark with his initials stamped on the cordovan in gold, at the beginning of a chapter titled “The Soul in the World of Souls after Death.” He’d underlined several paragraphs and he reread them now.

There follows after death a period for the human spirit in which the soul casts off its weakness for its physical existence in order then to behave in accordance with the laws of the world of the spirit and the soul alone, and to free the mind. It is to be expected that the longer the soul was bound to the physical the longer this period will last… .

His right hand returned to the brass buttons on the chair. The metal was cool to the touch. There was not much he’d ever lusted after the way he craved these stones. Once he had them, oh, the knowledge he would gain. The mysteries he would solve. The history he could learn. And more than that.

He read the next paragraph, in which Steiner described how great a pain the soul suffered through its loss of physical gratification and how that condition would continue until the soul had learned to stop longing for things that only a human body could experience.

What would it be like to reach the level of not longing? A pure level of thought, of experiencing the oneness of the universe? The ultimate goal of being reincarnated?

He looked up from the page and over at the phone, as if willing the call to come. It was a simple burglary: the professor was elderly. He would be there alone. It was just a matter of overpowering him and taking the box. A child could accomplish it. And if a child could do it, an expert could certainly do it. And he was only hiring experts at every step of the way. The most expensive experts money could buy. For a treasure, for this treasure, was any price too high?

There was no reason to worry. The call would come when the job was done. The round brass buttons were warm once more. He moved his fingers over to the next two, relieved by the cold metal on his skin, and returned to the book.

Having reached this highest degree of sympathy with the rest of the world of the soul, the soul will dissolve in it, will become one with it … .

If he had proof of past lives, actual reassurance of future lives, what would he do with the knowledge first? Not torture or punish; he had no desire to cause pain or sorrow. Find lost treasure? Discover truths that had been turned into lies through history? Yes, all that in time, but the first thing he would—

The sound startled him, although he was expecting it, and he jerked forward in the chair. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t pick up on the first ring. He put the bookmark back in the book and closed it. Listening to the second ring, he took a satisfying breath. He’d waited for this for so long.

Lifting the receiver, he held it up to his ear.

“Yes?”

“It’s done,” said the man in heavily accented Italian.

“You’ll proceed to the next step?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

He was ready to hang up, but the man spoke quickly. “There’s something I should tell you.”

He braced himself.

“We had a small accident, and—”

“No. Not on the phone. Report it through your contact.” He hung up and stood.

People were fools. He’d explained a dozen times how important it was that nothing revealing be discussed over the phone. Anyone could be listening. Besides, it didn’t matter if there’d been a small accident. Accidents happened, didn’t they? What mattered was that the stones were almost in his possession, at last.

Chapter 8

“Are you hurt?” Josh asked the professor.

“No, stunned, not hurt.”

He was on his back, lying on the mosaic floor, at the foot of the ladder.

“Here, let me help you. Are you sure he didn’t hit you?”

“It was so odd, looking up into the barrel of the gun, it was like looking into the night. Except a night as big as all the nights I’ve ever known. As big as all the nights Bella has slept all these sixteen hundred years.”

Rudolfo was having trouble straightening up; he was favoring one side of his body.

“Are you sure you are all right?”

He nodded. Concentrated. Frowned. And then looked down at his stomach.

The professor was wearing a dark blue shirt, and until that moment, in the low light inside the tomb, Josh had missed the spreading stain. But now they both saw it at the same time.

As carefully as he could, Josh pulled the professor’s shirt away from his body. The wound seeped blood. Snaking his fingers around Rudolfo’s back, he checked for an exit wound. He couldn’t find one. The bullet was still inside him.

Meanwhile, the professor kept talking. “Good timing for you,” he said. “If you hadn’t been in the tunnel you would be bleeding like a pig, too, eh?”

Except, Josh thought, if he’d been quicker, he might have prevented this. Hadn’t he thought this before?

“Bad timing for me,” the professor rambled. “I would have liked to have lived long enough to find out if what Gabriella and I have found … Find out if what Bella has been protecting all these years … is … is … as important as we think.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you.” Josh put his fingers on the man’s wrist, looked at his own watch and counted.

“If I’d had a daughter …” the professor said, “she’d be just like her … tough as nails … with that one soft streak. She’s too much alone, though … all the time alone… .”

“Bella?” Josh asked, only half listening. The professor was losing blood too quickly; his pulse was too slow.

Rudolfo tried to laugh but only managed a grimace. “No. Gabby. This find … Her find … Something no one believed existed. But she was as cool as … What is your expression … Cool as … What is it?”

“Cool as? Oh. Cool as a cucumber.”

Rudolfo smiled faintly; he was visibly failing.

“Professor, I need to call for help. Do you have a phone?”

“Now we know … dangerous … what we found … . You’ll tell her, dangerous… .”

“Professor, do you have a phone? I need to call for help.”

“Did he take … all of the box, too?”

“The box?” Josh looked around and saw the pieces of it on the ground. “No. It’s still here. Professor, can you hear me? Do you have a phone? I need to call for help. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“The box … is here?” The idea seemed to buoy him.

“Yes. Professor, do you have a phone?”

“Jacket. Pocket.”

Finding the phone, Josh checked for a signal and then dialed 911. Nothing. He stared at the LED panel. 911? Why did he think the number would be the same in Italy?

He hit zero and was connected in seconds with an operator.

“Medical emergency,” he shouted as soon as he heard another human voice, hoping the words were similar enough in Italian for her to understand. They must have been because the woman said sì and switched him over. While he waited he wondered what he would do if the next operator didn’t speak English. But that turned out to be the least of his problems.

“Yes, I understand. An ambulance. Where is your location?” the next operator asked.

An address. A simple thing, really. Except Josh had no idea where he was. He looked down; the professor’s eyes were shut.

“Professor Rudolfo? Can you hear me? I need to tell them where we are. An address. Can you hear me?”

No response.

Josh explained what was going on to the sympathetic woman on the other end of the phone. “He’s not responsive. I’m afraid he’s dying. And I don’t know where we are.”

“Are there any landmarks?”

“I’m sixteen feet under the ground!”

“Go outside, look for something, some sign, a name, a building. Anything.”

“I’ll have to leave him.”

“Yes, but you have no choice.”

He leaned down to the professor. “I’m going outside for a minute.”

Rudolfo opened his eyes and Josh thought he’d heard the question and was going to tell him where they were, but he wasn’t focused on Josh. Searching the room frantically, his eyes settled on the body of the woman who had died here so many years ago. Then he slipped back into unconsciousness.

Josh looked over at her, too. “Keep him safe,” he whispered, oblivious of how strange a thing that was for him to do.

Even though he climbed up the ladder as quickly as he could, he didn’t think he was moving fast enough. Reaching the surface, he scanned the area.

“I’m in a damn field. I see … there are cypress trees … oak trees …” He turned. “A hill behind me. About five hundred yards away there’s a piece of a gate or a building, very old… .”

“That doesn’t help. No signs?”

“If there was a sign, goddamn it—” His voice was strained and loud.

“There is probably a road, sir. Find the road if you can,” she interrupted.

“Right. Stay with me. I’ll find something.”

Josh jogged down the slight hill. Looked left, right. It was just a stretch of two-lane highway. To his right there was a bend blocking the view. To the left, more of the same vista: cypress tress, lush verdant fields with terracotta rooftops far in the background. Nothing specific to help him tell her where they were.

Someone must know where the hell this place was. Someone other than the man who lay dying in the crypt.

“Tell me your name,” Josh said to the woman on the phone. “There’s someone I can call to get the address. I’ll call you right back.”

“My name is Rosa Montanari, but I can stay on the line and connect you. Give me the number, sir.”

Ninety seconds later, Malachai Samuels answered his cell phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

“I don’t have any time to explain this to you, but quick, I need you to find Gabriella Chase and get me the exact address of the dig.”

“I just this minute sat down with Gabriella Chase. For breakfast. Aren’t you coming?”

“Put her on the phone.”

“Why don’t you tell me what—”

“I can’t now,” he interrupted. “This is an emergency.”

There was a brief pause during which Josh heard Malachai repeating what he’d said. Then he heard a woman’s voice, deep, silvery and anxious.

“Hello, this is Gabriella Chase. Is something wrong?”

Josh stayed on the line while Gabriella dictated the address and then while the operator ordered the ambulance. He didn’t understand what was being said, but it was reassuring to know that help was on its way.

When she finished talking to the paramedics, Rosa told Josh she’d stay on the phone with him until they got there and suggested he check on the professor so she could keep the ambulance drivers updated.

Rudolfo’s breathing was even shallower and he had less color than minutes before.

“Professor Rudolfo? Professor?”

His lips parted and he whispered a few unintelligible syllables.

“Mr. Ryder? Are you there?”

Josh almost forgot he was still holding the phone to his ear. “Yes?”

“How is the professore?” Rosa asked.

“Very bad. He’s unconscious.”

“The ambulance should arrive in eight to ten minutes.”

“I don’t know if he can make it that long. He’s still bleeding. I thought it had stopped. Is there anything I can do until they get here?”

“I have a doctor standing by.”

This wondrous woman had an emergency room doctor on another line, and for the next interminable few minutes, with Rosa translating, Dr. Fallachi helped Josh keep the professor alive and stop the blood loss. It would take approximately twenty minutes for someone to bleed out and die from a wound like the one the professor sustained, the doctor said. Josh judged ten to twelve minutes had already passed. It was going to be close.

From the corner, Sabina, because now that was how he thought of her, looked over at them with her sightless eyes, and under her ghostly gaze he felt the full force of his failure. If this man died, it was his fault. If he hadn’t been in the tunnel, he would have been able to help Rudolfo. Instead, he’d been deep in the earth, bathed in sweat, almost paralyzed with anxiety, crawling toward some long-forgotten remembrance or some insane man’s delirium.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. But only the bones heard him. Sabina’s bones.

Chapter 9

One minute, Josh was cradling the professor, waiting for the ambulance. The next, the scent of jasmine and sandalwood blew past him, and he braced himself for the first stirrings of exhalation that preceded an episode. At the same time that Josh desperately wanted to stop the lurch, he also ached for it. An addict, this was his drug. It was that exhilarating. It was that horrific.

Josh had always thought that occasional sense of recognition people experience when they meet someone for the first time and feel an instant connection was nothing to pay attention to. You laugh and say, I’d swear I already know you. Or when you go on vacation to a town you’ve never been to but feel like you have been there before. It’s disturbing, but you shake it off. Or it’s amusing, and you mention it to a friend or spouse.

It’s just déjà vu, you say, not thinking twice.

Maybe when it used to happen.

But not now.

Malachai and Dr. Talmage had educated him beyond that. That fleeting sense was a gift, a moment of unforgetting, signifying that there was a connection between you and the person you’d just met or the place you’d just visited. Nothing is an accident, nothing is a coincidence, according to theories of rebirth that go back through history, through the centuries, circling through cultures, changing and developing, but only attracting so much controversy in the West after the fourth century A.D. In the East, being skeptical about reincarnation would have been as unusual as questioning the wetness of water.

While he waited for what seemed much too long, trying to will the professor to live, Josh was certain he’d tasted death in that place before. He didn’t know what had happened here in the past, only that he now felt he was on some unimaginable journey of repetition that was out of his power to stop.

Sitting on the ground, feeling the professor’s pulse slow, he trained his eyes out the opening, up toward the sky. This way, as soon as the paramedics arrived, he’d see them.

The air undulated around him, and shivers of anticipation shot up and down his arms and legs. Even while he sat perfectly still in one dimension, he was being sucked down into a vortex where the atmosphere was heavier and thicker, where he floated like a ghost rather than walking like a man, and where he felt pleasure more purely and pain more acutely.

It began like every episode. The scene developed slowly, the way photographs appear, as if by magic, on pristine sheets of paper, swimming up out of a swirl of liquid. He was the stranger outside looking in as the scene opened before him. He saw the players and the stage. And then, in a matter of seconds, he became the person he was observing. Saw now through another’s eyes, spoke in the other’s voice. Was not himself. Had lost himself. Did not know there was another self.

Chapter 10

Julius and Sabina Rome—386 A.D.

The screams alerted him as the wind blew the smell of the acrid smoke into his bedchamber. They all lived in fear of it, and most of them had been witness to some form of it at some point in their lives. Fire was their most sacred possession, and fire was their fiercest enemy.

The story of the great conflagration that burned two-thirds of the city down more than three hundred years before was still told as a cautionary tale. During the night of July 18, a blaze started in the merchants’ area. There were too many structures, all made of wood, squeezed too close together. Hot summer winds fanned the flames until one by one, the stores and dwellings, some five-, six-stories high, caught on fire. For six days and seven nights, the inferno raged, and then for several days afterward, it smoldered.

The city was left in ruins.

The historian Tacitus wrote an account describing how terrified men and women, the helpless old and the helpless young, fugitives and lingerers alike, tried to escape all at once, which only added to the confusion.

Some, it was said, those who’d lost too much, or who were consumed with guilt at not having been able to save their loved ones, chose not to run, but freely gave themselves to the fire and died in the blaze. To make it worse, many who might have helped had been afraid to fight, since menacing gangs were attacking those who tried. That’s where the rumors came from that Nero had ordered the fire to persecute early Christians. After all, Nero had been tormenting them for years, using them as human torches, crucifying and sacrificing them. But would the emperor destroy his own city, his own treasures?

Others blamed that great inferno on angry gods and ill luck. Still others believed the early Christians themselves started the fire to destroy the pagan city they despised. For weeks before that fated July night, in the streets of the poorest neighborhoods, early radical upstarts were passing out leaflets prophesying the burning destruction of Rome and stirring up public opinion against the old order.

Now, three centuries later, as Julius ran toward the temple, nostrils burning, feeling the heat on his face intensifying, he worried that this blaze was politically motivated. He and many of the other high priests held that these were the last days of the Roman Empire, as they’d known it. The emperor and the Bishop of Milan were seeing to that. The ideological fight between the all-encompassing pagan order and the thousands of Romans who believed in the teachings of the Jewish prophet Jesus, or who paid lip service to it in order to curry favor with their emperor, was becoming an ugly battle between two ways of life, between many gods and one god.

Paganism was a mosaic, like the designs on the temple floors. It was made up of dozens of sects, faiths and cults it had absorbed over the years. As a result, religious freedom reigned in Rome for centuries. Why must an old faith be destroyed to make room for a new one?

Using the gray, billowing clouds as a map toward the site, Julius could tell that the fire was close to the Atrium Vestae, the house where the Vestals lived, just behind the circular Temple of Vesta at the eastern edge of the Roman Forum. The eighty-four-room palace built around an elegant courtyard had burned to the ground several times in the past. Ironic that the Goddess Vesta was the greatest threat to those who kept her safe.

As the strong orange blaze reached higher into the blackened sky, one by one they came: priests and citizens, breathing in the fumes, choking on them, but determined to save the house and ensure the fire didn’t encroach on the temple. It wasn’t only buildings at risk, but legendary treasures that were said to be hidden in a secret substructure under the holy hearth.

By the time Julius arrived there were two dozen firefighters, men from every walk of life who volunteered and were trained to race to the fire site and fight the blaze as soon as it was reported. One small fire—because of all the wooden buildings—could turn into an inferno in no time.

Much to his horror, Julius realized that one of the firefighters wasn’t a man—but a woman who hadn’t stayed back with her sisters. She shouldn’t be there, it was too dangerous. But the men were too busy to try and pull her away or warn her to be careful. Even if they’d tried, he knew it wouldn’t have made any difference: she would have been right back on the front line two minutes later.

Defiance was typical of Sabina, who’d been a constant challenge to the sisters who’d trained her. Although they marveled at her clairvoyance, they complained that her tenacity and willfulness weren’t suited to being a priestess.

Neither was her contempt for him.

In front of others, she showed him the minimum of respect required to keep out of trouble. But when no one else was around, if their paths crossed, she let her feelings show. There were days it made him want to laugh that she looked at him with so much antagonism; others when he wanted to punish her for her impudence. It disturbed him because there was no reason for her reactions. And even less reason that despite her antagonism to him, he felt drawn to her. Admired her. Cheered her on.

As the head priestess, she proved exemplary. But unlike the other Vestals, Sabina possessed a stubborn streak, a refusal to give up all of her personality to the group, which propelled her to become one the most educated of all the nuns in recent years, studying medicine and learning how to be a healer, although it added extra responsibility to her already full life. When tired customs didn’t make sense to her, she questioned them, changed them and breathed life into the old order. Even when it alienated her from the older sisters and conservative priests, she fought back bravely, passionately. Recently, the most traditional among them were applauding her efforts.

A section of the house collapsed with a loud crash. The fire was winning the battle. Sabina worked as hard as Julius did to smother the flames; she was as valiant a fighter as any man there. When their eyes met for a brief second, Julius looked away, chilled, despite the fire’s heat, by the look she flashed at him. She was determined to live, which meant the fire had to die. But either she’d inhaled too much smoke or she was just too exhausted, because suddenly she fell to the ground.

Angry blisters marred her cheeks. Her robe was ripped up the side and across the front, exposing her long legs and breasts, all blackened with soot.

None of the other men seemed to have noticed. If she wasn’t dead, one of them was bound to trample her to death. Julius couldn’t let that happen. Leaving his post, he ran to her, picked her up and carried her lifeless body out of the way, the heat at his back becoming less and less intense until he wasn’t aware of it anymore.

Sabina was heavy in his arms, and he felt the full burden of her: of her position as head of the nuns, of her complicated response to him, of her power and vitality. Finally far enough away from the fire, he laid her down on a patch of grass, allowing himself to focus on her and give in to his curiosity and his obsession—because if he was honest with himself, despite his best efforts and for no rational reason he knew, that was what she’d become.

Putting his ear to her breast, he listened for her life sounds. All he heard was his own nervous heart beating so loudly in his ears. But from her chest—silence.

No, it wasn’t possible that the fire had beaten her.

Not Sabina.

He didn’t realize he was shouting until the wind threw his own howl back at him.

No. Not Sabina.

She had too much energy, too much resolve.

He wanted to pray, but the grief crowded out all the words. He shut his eyes. The smell of jasmine and sandalwood emanated from her skin—mixed in with the bitter smell of the smoke—whispering to him, hinting of something he’d never had and now would never know.

By the time the other priests were his age they’d married and fathered children. They teased him about his unmarried state, not understanding it. Marriages allowed for every taste and predilection, they chided—even for men who preferred sex with other men. Why can’t you find a wife?

Only to himself, only now, could he admit that he’d found a woman he wanted to wed, but of all the women in all of Rome she was one of a very select few he couldn’t have.

He had been a young priest when she became a Vestal. And from the very beginning she had stood out. She was bright and curious as a young girl, then feisty and determined as an adolescent. His admiration had turned to attraction when her slim body had started to curve, when her breasts and hips teased him from under her robes.

For the past twelve years, Sabina had taunted him, then challenged him. Now, in death, she would haunt him.