The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense Read online

“Not likely, no. Unless . . .” He paused as he thought it out. His left eye blinked, his right didn’t. “Unless that’s exactly why you have come back. Because it would make you an unlikely suspect.”

  Sixteen

  NANJING, CHINA

  TUESDAY, MAY 24, 8:00 P.M.

  A dour-faced official took a pair of jeans out of Xie’s suitcase, unfolded them, and methodically fished inside each pocket.

  Xie, who stood with Cali on the other side of a plastic partition, averted his gaze. Even though he had known there were sometimes spot exit inspections in China and that his bag contained no contraband, he was nervous. Why had they singled him out? Had Chung guessed that Xie had ulterior motives for wanting to make this trip and put out an alert?

  “After this checkpoint, we’ll have to separate,” Cali said and pointed toward the next security area.

  Xie thought her hand looked like a flower in a breeze.

  “We’ll say good-bye, and then you’ll be on your way.”

  Her chatter was a welcome distraction from the guard, who was making him more and more anxious with every item of clothing he removed from the bag.

  “Have you ever been so far away before?” Cali asked.

  “No. I’ve never been out of China.” It surprised him how easy it was to lie sometimes, even to someone he cared so much about. “Last year I went to Hefei to see Professor Wu receive the Lanting Award.” It was for excellence in calligraphy. The most prestigious award in all of China.

  The guard took a gray sweater out of the bag and shook it. Xie tried not to stare.

  “A two-and-a-half-hour bus ride isn’t what I mean,” Cali said. “This time you’re leaving China. Flying on a plane. Seeing foreign lands. Eating food you won’t recognize.” Thinking about the trip, her eyes shone.

  “You should have been chosen too,” Xie said. “Your work is as good as anyone’s who was picked. Better than most.”

  “But I’m too outspoken. I’m almost subversive.” She laughed. “I’m not upset that my work wasn’t picked. I’m upset that you’re getting out and I’m not. I want to see all the art you’re going to see.” Despite the partition, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “And I want to talk to the people you’re going to meet. Tell them what’s going on here. Really going on.”

  “I know,” he said.

  The guard unrolled a pair of black socks and searched inside each.

  “I’ll tell them.”

  Her dark brown eyes flickered with anger. “No, you won’t,” she said. “You’re not going to take any chances. I know you. You’re going to be careful. Please, Xie. Don’t be careful. We need to tell people how bad the censorship is here. How they are trying to control us.”

  It had taken Xie two years before he’d trusted Cali enough to confide in her that he had a secret. When he finally told her what it was, he’d still told her only half of it. “I want to become a Buddhist monk.” That’s all he’d said. He didn’t know how to form any of the other words, didn’t know how to make entire sentences out of the story locked up inside of him about being identified as a lama, the years at the monastery, the fire and his kidnapping.

  She’d been confused at his desire to live such an austere lifestyle and got angry with him when he couldn’t articulate why becoming a monk mattered to him. Instead, she’d argued, he should join her and her friends, young radicals who wanted to change China, to be part of the new generation who opened doors.

  But he wanted to go in the other direction, back to a meditative world of seclusion that had all but disappeared.

  Even though Cali didn’t understand, she willingly agreed to help him. Using her knowledge of how to hack through China’s internet policing, she sent encrypted emails to monasteries in other parts of the world on his behalf. Believing he was asking for spiritual guidance, she never guessed what Xie was actually saying in those messages or what he was trying to set up.

  And now here they were. Cali wanted to change the world, but he was the one going off to try to accomplish it. Frustrated that he couldn’t tell her that their goals were the same and that this trip was part of the effort, at least he could comfort her. “You’ll have your chance,” he said. “Next year. Second-year grad students always have the best shot anyway. Next year.”

  The guard was examining Xie’s running shoes now. First the left, then the right. Even taking out the innersoles. Sweat dripped down Xie’s back. Was this just a delaying tactic until a higher official arrived to take him into custody? No, they wouldn’t handle it this way. There would be no pretense. If they suspected him, they would just arrest him. Wouldn’t they?

  “You have to remember every single thing you see.” Cali had moved from one of her passions to another. Now the art was making her forlorn. “All those paintings and all that sculpture . . .”

  But the paintings and the sculpture didn’t matter. London wasn’t important. Neither was Rome. It was Paris where the opportunity lay. It was Paris he had to get to, no matter how many obstacles he encountered between here and there. It would be in Paris where he’d make a political statement that would at last make Cali proud of him.

  As long as he got out of China. As long as his government didn’t find out what he was planning. As long as he didn’t do anything to raise suspicion with any of the students traveling with him who belonged to the Ministry of Public Security.

  The government had spies infiltrating every aspect of society—ordinary citizens, active in the job or organization or university they were monitoring so they always fit in. But trained to observe those around them and report unusual activity.

  Xie suspected the PRC students on this trip would be extra vigilant. There would be eyes watching him wherever he went. Taking note of everything he did. If he wasn’t conscientious, it would be easy to become anxious and self-conscious.

  That’s what the PRC wanted. Citizens aware and afraid. Citizens controlled.

  He was going to have to fight against it. Say his mantra. Constantly refocus his mind. Concentrate on what was next, on the importance of his mission.

  If the PRC found out—if they discovered that a lifetime of “reeducation” hadn’t worked—he’d never get another chance. If the authorities discovered that he remembered his abduction, the murder of his teachers, and—above all, that he knew he was the Panchen Lama they all feared surfacing—then he’d never succeed in being reunited with the Dalai Lama.

  The itinerary included excursions to Rome, London and Paris, but it wasn’t the great museums in each city that Xie thought about. When he let his mind fly, it was to one very small museum situated in the middle of a garden. No matter how many other people were around him and how crowded or noisy the gallery was, that’s where everything would change. For the rest of his life, there would forever be the time before that visit and the time after it.

  Unless the PRC noticed him and found him out. If that happened, then he’d never leave France alive.

  “I wish you could put me in that suitcase,” Cali said despondently.

  “And then what would I do with my clothes?”

  “You can buy new clothes when you get to London.”

  “And how would you get through customs?”

  “Please. No one opens bags at customs in London.”

  Her earnestness made him laugh, and that made her laugh.

  “So it’s a deal?” she asked. “Once he’s finished repacking your bag, I’ll climb in?”

  As he had a hundred times before, Xie wished he had a different destiny. One that allowed him to take this girl up in his arms, make love to her, to join her cause and be satisfied with that life. Instead he was bound to something he believed was his karmic duty. A path he was obliged to follow no matter what the cost.

  “Mr. Ping?” The official spoke through a microphone. “I am going to need to see your tickets now.”

  Xie pushed them through the slit in the partition and watched the man read the documents. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, h
e watched the official frown. Beside him, he felt Cali take his hand.

  Seventeen

  PARIS, FRANCE

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 7:30 A.M.

  Traveling all night and constant worrying had exhausted her. Jac closed her eyes, but the taxi was no more conducive to sleep than the plane had been. The closer they got to the city, the more her anxiety escalated. Jac hadn’t been back home to Paris since she’d left sixteen years before. Her grandmother lived in the south, in Grasse, along with the rest of her French family. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Even Robbie had moved there. Everyone except her father. And she’d had enough of him. Before his illness and since.

  Robbie.

  Where was Robbie?

  Even as children, they’d been emotional opposites. Somehow she found melancholy at the edge of things in which he delighted. But they shared so much. Cared so much. Despite their age difference, they’d been each other’s best friend. She was young for her age; he was old for his. Together alone in the mansion, they invented worlds to conquer and games that kept them busy during the long, dreary periods when their father was preoccupied with work and their mother was lost in her unhappiness.

  One game they invented, The Game of Impossible Fragrances, had become an obsession. Sitting at the child-size perfumer’s organ their father had built for them in the playroom, they cooked up fragrances to use as words. An entire vocabulary of scents they could use as their secret language. There were juices for laughter, fear, happiness, anger, hunger and loss.

  Looking out the window, Jac noticed more and more familiar sights. By the time the driver reached the sixth arrondissement, she could hear her own heartbeat.

  They turned down Rue des Saints-Pères. A police car was parked crazily—half on the sidewalk, half off. Two gendarmes stood outside the boutique’s entrance. She’d anticipated the scene, but its reality was chilling.

  Even though the police were expecting her, first one officer and then the other examined her passport. Finally, Jac was allowed to open the front door with her own keys. It had been over sixteen years since she’d used them.

  Holding her breath, Jac crossed the threshold. Looked around. Everything in her life had changed since she’d last been here, but nothing seemed different. The same antique mirrors reflected her face back at her—so tired, with deep circles under her eyes. The familiar mélange of the house’s classic scents greeted her. She looked up. The charming, lighthearted Fragonard-style cherubs in the ceiling mural welcomed her. This morning their cheerfulness was an affront to the seriousness of the situation.

  The sound of her footsteps echoed in the crystalline showroom. She stooped at the counter. Ran her fingers over the cool glass top. Her father had sold perfumes here. And his father before him, and on and on, going all the way back to the first L’Etoile, who’d opened this store in 1770. Like all early perfumers, he’d been a glove maker who used scent in order to imbue the kidskins with a more pleasant aroma. When he saw how well his efforts pleased his clients, he added other scented products to his wares: candles, pomades, soaps, sachets, powders, skin oils and creams.

  Robbie loved all those old stories. Knew every ancestor by date and which fragrances he had created.

  Robbie.

  No matter how long Jac postponed the inevitable, she couldn’t avoid it. If there were clues to where he was and to what happened, she wasn’t going to find them in the showroom. How foolish she’d been to think that she’d never have to confront the workshop again.

  With a trembling hand, Jac pushed on a mirrored panel behind the counter. The secret door opened. The corridor lay before her. Dark and uninviting. She stepped into the void.

  The heavy wood-paneled door at the end of the hallway was closed. She put her hand on the knob but didn’t twist it open. Not yet. If she ever lost her mind anywhere, Jac thought, it would be here.

  The old sadness settled on her shoulders as she stepped inside. Looking around for some evidence of what had transpired, she was aware only of the familiar, ghostly fragrance. Spices, flowers, woods, rain, earth—a million extracts and distillations—combined to create this room’s own particular and unique odor. Sometimes she woke up from dreams, her cheeks wet with tears and that smell in her nostrils.

  Jac rarely cried except in those dreams. Even as a child, when she felt the sting of tears, she blinked them back. Her mother was just the opposite. Jac often found her sitting at her desk in her turret office, her head bowed over her papers, tears sliding down her face.

  “Please don’t cry,” Jac would whisper. Seeing Audrey so sad made the little girl’s stomach cramp. Reaching up, she’d stroke her mother’s cheek dry. The child comforting the mother. The opposite of how it should be.

  “Stop crying, please.”

  “It’s not bad to cry, sweetheart. You can’t be scared of feeling.” What contradictory advice that had turned out to be—coming from a woman who ultimately surrendered to her own feelings. Became their victim.

  Suddenly Jac couldn’t catch her breath. The cacophony of scents in the workshop was even more overwhelming than she’d remembered.

  It had been so many years since Jac had suffered an episode, she’d believed she was cured. But here, for the first time since she was fifteen years old, she felt the never-forgotten shivers run up and down her arms. Painful pinpricks of cold. The smells around her intensified. The light dimmed. Shadows descended. Her thoughts threatened to wave away.

  No. Not now. Not now.

  At the clinic, Malachai had taught her an exercise using her own innate abilities to help control the visions. Her “sanity commandments,” she called them. Now, effortlessly, she remembered and followed the string of instructions:

  Open a window. A door. Get fresh air. Take long, concentrated breaths. Stop your mind from spiraling by giving it a task. Identify the scents in the air.

  Without being conscious of having left the workshop, Jac found herself standing outside in the courtyard. Breathing in the cool morning garden air. Grass. Roses. Lilacs. Hyacinth. She almost smiled at all the deep-purple hyacinths planted along the pathways.

  Jac kept breathing. Walked past boxwood pyramids and into the labyrinth.

  Now she was home. Here. Hidden by the two-hundred-year-old cypresses pruned into impenetrable walls so tall that a man couldn’t see over them. This complicated puzzle of warrens and dead ends. Anyone who didn’t know how to navigate the maze was lost. But Jac and her brother knew the route by heart. At least, they had as children.

  At the maze’s center, two stone sphinxes waited for her. In a fit of laughter, she and Robbie had named them Pain and Chocolat—after their favorite breakfast croissant.

  Between them a stone bench. In front of the bench, a stone obelisk covered with hieroglyphics. Jac sat down in its shadow.

  No one in the house liked coming inside the maze. So to escape an angry parent or nanny, this green room was her hiding place. Here she was safe from everyone but Robbie.

  And she never minded when he came to keep her company.

  Where was he?

  Jac felt panic threatening. That wouldn’t help. She needed to stay focused; try to find some answers. She inhaled the sharp, clean smell. Forced her mind to return to the state of the workroom. It was chaos. Even if there were clues to what had happened there two nights ago, who’d be able to sift through the mess to find them?

  Robbie had described the confusion and clutter he’d inherited, but she hadn’t understood how horrific it was. “A visual metaphor for the state of the family business,” Robbie had warned her. “For the state of our father’s mind.”

  He’d said Louis had become a hoarder in the past few years. Kept every piece of notepaper, every bill, every piece of mail, every bottle and box. The visible evidence spilled from cabinets and shelves. Robbie complained that every time he opened a drawer, he confronted yet another set of problems.

  “Mademoiselle L’Etoile?” The male voice was muffled by the thick hedges.

  “Yes,” s
he called. “It’s a small labyrinth but easy to get lost in. Stay where you are; I’ll find you.”

  After making her way back through the twisting green corridors, Jac found a well-dressed, middle-aged man frowning at the maze.

  “I realized right away I wasn’t going to make it through.” He extended his hand. “I’m Inspector Pierre Marcher.”

  There was something oddly familiar about him; something in his face that she recognized. “Have we met?” she asked.

  “Yes, we have,” he said. “Long ago.”

  She couldn’t place him. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “I’ve been assigned to this district for the past twenty years.”

  Now Jac nodded, understanding his shorthand.

  “So you were here that day?”

  “Yes, and I spoke with you,” he said gently. “You were so young. It was a terrible shame you had to be the one to find her.”

  Audrey had killed herself in her husband’s workshop, expecting he’d be the one to discover her body. It was the weekend. Robbie was at their grandmother’s. Jac was staying with a friend and her family in the country. But the other girl had gotten sick, so they’d returned early and dropped off Jac. The house had been empty. Jac saw the lights on in the workshop and went to see if her father was there.

  Jac’s grandmother had been the one to crawl under the organ. She’d unwrapped the girl’s arms from her dead mother’s legs. Pulled her head up from her mother’s unmoving lap. Jac was soaking wet with tears and the spilled tincture from a hundred broken bottles. Bloody ribbons of flesh hung off her fingers. Angry red scratches encircled her wrists and arms like piles of bracelets.

  Because Jac had been the one to find her mother’s body, the inspector had to ask her some questions. But it had taken hours for him to get answers. In her confused state, she couldn’t make sense of what she’d seen.

  There had been a screaming crowd in the workshop with her. An angry mob. They’d been the ones to break the glass and smash the bottles. To get away from them, Jac had hidden under the perfumer’s organ at her mother’s feet. What if the intruders found her? They’d killed Audrey. Would they kill her too? Why did they want to destroy the workshop? Why were they dirty? Why were they dressed in such old, ragged clothes? And why did they smell so bad? Not even the bottles of scent they broke disguised their stench.