The Reincarnationist

The stranger crossed in front of the tunnel opening and became somewhat visible. From his clothing, he looked like the man guarding the site whom Josh had encountered when he’d first arrived.

Nothing to worry about, then.

Except they continued to argue; hot words were flung back and forth so rapidly that even if Josh had spoken basic Italian, he wouldn’t have been able to understand.

The shouting escalated and the professor tried to push the guard away, but the man stepped back adroitly and Rudolfo lost his balance, falling to the ground. The guard put his foot on the professor’s chest.

It was almost impossible to crawl faster. There was too much debris in the tunnel, and despite the makeshift bandages, his wounds throbbed. But he must. This was tied to the past, a chance for Josh to right a wrong. It was inches from his reach, almost within his grasp.

A stone pierced the skin on his right knee. Involuntarily, Josh swore under his breath. Then he froze. The only chance he had to stop whatever was going on was to take the guard by surprise.

Then everything happened so quickly that he would have missed it if he’d glanced away for five seconds, but his eyes were riveted to the action. He just wasn’t fast enough to stop any of it. The entire tomb was in his sight now. Far away still, but visible.

The guard leaned down, bent over the ancient corpse and snatched the fruitwood box out of her arms.

“No, no …” The professor clawed at the guard, jumping on him like an angry monkey, grabbing at him, for the box.

As if the professor were a mere annoyance, the large man flung Rudolfo off. The professor landed on the ground, close to the mummy. Too close. His arm hit her and her head fell forward—she was in danger of coming apart. Rudolfo let out an agonized scream and rushed to her side. But before he could reach her, the guard kicked her with his heavy boot and her intact form splintered at the waist with a sickening crack.

While the professor kneeled at Sabina’s side, the guard opened the fruitwood box, pulled out what looked like a leather pouch, shook its contents into his hand, pocketed whatever he’d found and then hurled the box at the professor. It hit his shoulder and broke apart, the pieces flying into the air and then landing haphazardly.

Josh was only ten yards away, planning on how he was going jump out, take the man by surprise, tackle him and get back what he’d taken.

Hand forward.

Knee forward.

Hand forward.

Knee forward.

Rudolfo stood, dizzy, rocking back and forth. The guard hurried toward the ladder.

With only a few feet left to go, Josh inched steadily forward. The way the tunnel was angled he could see the whole scene, and he watched with growing dread as the professor rushed toward the opening of the tomb.

The guard had started up the ladder.

Rudolfo tried to grab hold of the man’s shirt, to pull him down, to stop him.

The guard pushed the professor’s hand away as if it were nothing more than an insect and took another step up.

Not ready to give up, Rudolfo took hold of the ladder’s wooden dowels and tried to shake the guard loose.

Josh had two, maybe three yards to go.

The guard stopped climbing—he was halfway up now, and he just stood there, staring down at Rudolfo, and then he pulled out his gun.

The professor took a step up the ladder.

The guard’s finger teased the trigger.

Josh was almost at the entrance of the tunnel, and just as he screamed an agonized “no” in warning, the gun went off, causing an enormous explosion in the small tomb and drowning out his warning. Behind him, he heard a rumble and then the sound of heavy rain. No. Not rain. Rocks. Some parts of the tunnel’s walls were collapsing in on themselves. And in front of him, he saw the professor fall on his back on the hard, cold, ancient mosaic floor.

Chapter 7

T he man sat in the leather chair, his hands resting on the arm pads, his fingers circling the smooth nail heads. Around and around the cold metal circles as if this one movement was enough to keep him occupied forever. His eyes were shut. The gold drapes were drawn, and the room’s rich decor was cloaked in darkness.

He was satisfied to sit and do nothing but wait. Long pauses in the plan didn’t bother him. Not after all this time. From the moment he’d first heard the legend of the Memory Stones he knew that one day whatever power they held would be his. Needed to be his. No price was too high and no effort was too great to find out about the past.

His past.

His present.

And so, too, his future.

The idea that the stones might work, that they could, in fact, enable people to remember their previous lives, was unbearably pleasurable to him. He fantasized about the stones the way other men fantasized about women. His daydreams about what would happen once they were in his possession elevated his blood pressure, took away his breath and made him feel weak and strong at the same time in an utterly satisfying way. And because he’d been taught to be disciplined, he gave in to the temptation of dreaming about them only when he felt he deserved the indulgence.

He deserved it now.

Were they emeralds? Sapphires the color of the night skies? Lapis? Obsidian? Were they rough? Polished? What would they feel like? Small and smooth? Larger? Like glass? Would they be luminescent? Or dull, ordinary-looking things that didn’t begin to suggest their power?

He didn’t mind waiting, but it seemed to him that he should have heard by now.

He had an appointment he had to keep. No, it was premature to worry. He wouldn’t contemplate any kind of failure. He disliked that he’d involved other people in his plan. No one you hired, no matter how much you paid them, was entirely trustworthy. Regardless of how well he’d tried to plan for the mistakes that could happen along the way, he was certain to have overlooked at least a few. He felt a new wave of anxiety start to build deep in his chest and took several deep breaths.

Relax. You’ve reached this point. You’ll succeed.

But so much is at stake.

He picked up the well-worn book he’d been reading last night when his anticipation of what today would bring had kept him awake, Theosophy by the nineteenth-century philosopher Rudolf Steiner. There were always new books being published on the subject that mattered so much to him—he bought and read them all—but it was the thinkers of the past centuries whom he responded to and returned to so often: the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Walt Whitman, Longfellow; the prose of Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and so many more who engaged, reassured and aided him in amending and revising his own ever-evolving theories. They were his touchstones, these great minds that he could only know through their words. So many brilliant men and women who had believed what he believed.

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—