The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville

From the Publisher

When her cousin is slain by an unknown assassin, Ariel Behn becomes the sole heir to a family legacy: a sinister cache of manuscripts that thrusts her into the deadly center of international intrigue--and an age-old enigma that spans the centuries. Whoever assembles and interprets the cryptic clues of this ancient mystery will possess the power to control the fate of the world.

What strange powers lie hidden within the manuscripts? Splashed against a lavish backdrop that sweeps from the rise of the Roman Empire to the fall of the Berlin Wall, THE MAGIC CIRCLE finds one woman standing at the center of it all: Ariel Behn. As she races across continents to reveal the dark secrets buried in her family's past, she begins to unlock the chilling truth of the coming millennium. . . .

Publishers Weekly

Neville's reach exceeds her grasp by a long shot in her chaotic third novel (after The Eight and A Calculated Risk), a bewildering attempt to blend historical fiction, New Age adventure and modern techno-thriller. Utah nuclear technician Ariel Behn receives a set of mysterious manuscripts from her Native American cousin Sam, who has narrowly survived their attempted theft. As possessor of the scrolls, Ariel finds her life in similar danger, especially after her company sends her to Russia with handsome, mysterious Wolfgang Hauser. During a torrid affair with Wolfgang, Ariel comes to suspect that he may be after the scrolls himself. At the same time, various members of her glamorous, far-flung family inform her that Hitler, Genghis Khan and the ancient Romans all sought the scrolls, which seem to hold the key to a secret power grid beneath the earth. Alternating family history with thorny historical passages, Neville brings the narrative back to Utah for a ludicrous wilderness showdown among the scrolls' pursuers. Neville has buried a decent story in so many expository layers of far-fetched historical gibberish and New Age nonsense that even her most devoted readers may find themselves exasperated.

Los Angeles Times

Not to be missed... Extraordinary... I've read nothing like it since the author's previous bestseller, The Eight.

The Seattle Times

A page-turner...A cerebral caper that crosses a thriller with a romance and a mystical quest.

Los Angeles Times

Not to be missed… Extraordinary… I've read nothing like it since the author's previous bestseller, The Eight.

Seattle Times

A page-turner…A cerebral caper that crosses a thriller with a romance and a mystical quest.

Kirkus Reviews

Like Neville's 1988 debut, The Eight, another daft, overstuffed, sprawling sofa of a yarn involving dozens of famous figures, places, and objects, along with a mysterious manuscript that nobody ever gets to read—oh, yeah, and the collapse of communism. Ariel Behn, a nuclear security worker and part-time code-breaker, is devastated when her beloved brother, Sam (he isn't really her brother and. well, it's complicated), turns up dead. Among other things, he had a manuscript for Ariel that, suddenly, all sorts of people are eager to lay their hands on. Then a decidedly undead Sam (bad guys tried to assassinate him and got the wrong man) contacts his sister and says he sent her the encoded document, though it's never arrived. The devilishly handsome Wolfgang Hauser of the International Atomic Energy Agency also shows an interest in the manuscript, as does Uncle Lafcadio, arriving from Austria, violin teacher Dacian Bassarides (Ariel's grandfather, we eventually learn), and Ariel's boss, Pastor Owen Dart. Meanwhile, in numerous historical asides, we meet Ariel's great-aunt Clio (she finds something important in the Sibyl's cave in 1890), Jesus, Aleister Crowley, Pontius Pilate, four Roman emperors, Joseph of Arimathea, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, etc.

What are they all after? It seems a set of ancient sacred objects, or "Hallows," possess immense magical powers, and the manuscript describes—maybe locates—those objects. There's more than one manuscript, of course. Elsewhere, Ariel learns just how diverse and cosmopolitan her huge family is: Adolf Hitler, or "Lucky," was a close family friend; various other relatives turn out to be fascists; and wolfishWolfgang, a Nazi who's crazy about Ariel while he thinks she's thoroughly Aryan, is crushed to learn that her grandfather was a gypsy. The heroine's devastating discoveries concerning her family's murky history are intriguing and worthwhile; pity Neville didn't just junk the rest of it. Still, fans of The Eight should stagger away with bemused grins.

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Cumae, Italy
Autumn, A.D. 1870

It was just before dusk. The ancient volcanic Lake Avernus, high above Cumae, seemed to float in the air, partly veiled with a thin, metallic haze. Between the patches of mist, the lake's glassy surface mirrored opalescent clouds, scudding across the crescent sliver of the moon.

The walls of the crater were wild with scrub oak, changing color from bloodred to purple in the descending twilight. The aroma of the dark sulfurous lake filled the air with the eerie sense of danger. The very landscape of this ancient, hallowed spot seemed to be waiting for something, something that had been foretold for thousands of years. Something that was about to happen tonight.

As the darkness deepened, a figure slipped stealthily from the trees bordering the water's edge. It was followed swiftly in the darkness by three others. Though all four were dressed in sturdy leather breeches, jerkins, and helmets, it was clear by form and bearing that their leader was a woman. Over her shoulder she carried a pickaxe, a roll of oiled tarpaulin, sturdy rope, and other climbing gear. Her male companions followed silently, skirting the rim to the far side of the lake until they reached the spot that they'd located from the crudely drawn map in their possession.

The woman moved back into the shadows, where a thick cluster of trees camouflaged an abutment of overhanging cliff. In darkness, she felt along the sheer face of vine-covered rock until she'd once more found the hidden crevasse. Pulling on heavy gloves, she loosened the rubble she'd so carefully replaced earlier. Her heart pounded as she slipped sideways through the narrow cleft in the rock, followed by her three companions.

Now inside the cliff, the woman quickly unrolled the tarpaulin. With the help of the others she stuffed it into the crack so that not even the smallest trace of light from the cave could be observed outside. Then she pulled off her metal helmet in the darkness and lit the carbide miner's lamp affixed to it. Tossing back her mane of blonde hair, she gazed at her three rugged companions, whose eyes glittered in the lamplight. Then she turned to look at the cave.

Carved from the lava rock, the walls of the vast cavern rose more than one hundred feet above them. It took her breath away when she realized they stood at the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped off into the pitch-black void. She could hear the sound of rushing water from what seemed hundreds of feet below. This was the passage that had once led those seeking the mysteries deep within the bowels of this extinct volcano. This was the legendary place sought by so many over so many centuries, the cavern that had once served as home to the most ancient of all prophets: the Sibylline Oracle.

Now, as she shone the lamp across the glistening walls, the woman knew there could be no mistaking what she'd found. The cave was exactly as described by those who'd visited here from earliest times--Heraclitus, Plutarch, Pausanius, and the poet Virgil, who'd immortalized this grotto in verse as the site of Aeneas' entry into the underworld. Indeed, she knew that she and her three comrades could well be the first to have laid eyes on this fabled spot in two millennia.

When the emperor Augustus had seized power in Rome in 27 b.c., his first act had been to round up any written copies of the Sibylline Oracles. He'd burned any he had deemed "inauthentic"--those that did not support his tenure, or which had prophetically heralded the return of the Republic. Then he'd ordered the Cumaean grotto sealed, and its official entrance, located not here but at the base of the volcano, was buried beneath a mountain of rubble. All trace of the famous cave's existence had been lost to mankind. Until now.

The young woman set down her gear and once again pulled on her mining helmet with its small beacon of light. Extracting from her leather jerkin the crudely drawn map she'd brought, she handed it to the tallest of the three men. She addressed him aloud for the first time.

"Aszi, you will come with me," she told him. "Your brothers must remain here and guard this entrance. For if we can make no progress below, this crevasse will have to be our only avenue of escape." Turning to the sheer cliff, she added, undaunted, "I shall make the first descent."

But he'd taken her by the wrist. His handsome face searched hers with great concern. Then he drew her to him and gently kissed her forehead.

"No, let me go down first, Clio," he said. Then he added, with a smile, "I was born on the rocks, you know, carita; I can climb like a goat. My brothers will lower you after me." When she shook her head, he told her, "Despite what your father may have sketched out on this map before he died, it's just one man's scholarly opinion, formed only from reading dusty books. Even through all his travels, your father could never find the place, and you know well that oracles are often dangerous. The one at Delphi kept a brood of deadly pythons in her cave. You can't know what we'll find in the shrine you imagine is down there, in the dark."

Clio shuddered at the thought, and the two strapping young men nodded in support of their brother's bravery. Aszi lit a second lamp, which he clipped onto his own helmet. The men lashed down the heavy rope, and their younger brother, with only his bare hands on hemp, used his hobnailed boots to clear the wall and vanished with a brief, flashing smile into the darkness.

After what seemed a very long while, the rope swung loose, so they knew he had touched bottom. Clio passed her own rope between her legs to form a harness, which the brothers secured to the main line as double protection if she slipped. Then she, too, went over the side.

As Clio descended the sheer rock face, alone and in silence, she studied the schist in the light of her lamp as if it contained the key to some riddle. If walls had ears, she thought, this one might reveal thousands of years of mysteries. Just like the Sibyl herself, a woman who could see all of the future and past.

The oldest oracle in history, a woman who lived in many lands, over hundreds of generations, the Sibyl was born on Mount Ida, from which the gods once overlooked the war on the plains of Troy. More than five hundred years before Christ, the Sibyl traveled to Rome, where she offered to sell to king Tarquin the books of her prophecies spanning the next twelve thousand years. When he refused to meet her price she burned the first three volumes, then the next three, until only three books were left. Tarquin did buy these, and he enshrined them in the Temple of Jupiter, where they remained until that, too, burned to the ground, along with its precious contents.

The Sibyl's vision was so profound and far-reaching, she had been granted any wish by the gods. She asked to live for one thousand years, but she forgot to ask for youth. As the end of her life approached, she had shrunk so small that nothing remained but her voice, which still prophesied from a little glass ampulla placed in this ancient cave of the mysteries. People traveled from far and wide to hear her song--until Augustus silenced her, for eternity, with Neapolitan clay.

Clio hoped beyond hope that the information her father had gleaned from his wealth of readings in ancient texts, a vision he'd only really understood on his deathbed, would prove to be true. Whether true or not, to follow the overriding wish of a dying man had already cost her everything she'd known in her young life.

When she reached bottom, she felt Aszi's strong hands grasp her waist, helping her to gain her footing on the slippery rocks that bordered the onrushing underground river.

They walked for more than an hour through the caverns beneath the volcano, following the directions her father had laid forth on the map. At last they came to the hollow, high in the rock, beneath which the Sibyl's successors, young country women, had for centuries sat on a golden throne--now a mass of crumbled stones--transmitting the oracles passed down from the mind of the ancient goddess. Aszi stopped beside Clio, then unexpectedly bent to her and kissed her on the lips. He smiled.

"You are nearly free," he said.

Without another word, he bounded up the tumble of rock to the hollow, scaling the last length of cliff with his hands. Clio held her breath as he gained a purchase against the rock with his boots and stretched to reach into the high hollow, feeling about in the dark hole above his head. After a long moment, he drew something out.

When he returned, he handed it to Clio. It was a shimmering object, like a tiny vial, not much larger than her palm. Clio had never believed that the Sibyl's voice was contained in an ampulla, but rather that the ancient vial held her prophetic words. Her prophecies, Plutarch had said, were written on small bits of metal, so light and fragile that, when released, they were borne away on the wind.

Clio carefully opened the vial and the tiny leaves tumbled out into her palm, each the size of a fingernail, and each inscribed in Greek. She touched one leaf and looked into Aszi's dark purple eyes gazing into her own.

"What does it say?" he whispered.

"In Greek? I don't know what the others say, but this one says, ÔHen to Pan,'" she told him, looking at the leaf. "It means ÔOne is All.'"

The Sibyl had foretold what would happen at each critical turning point in history--and more important, how it was connected to each critical event of the past. It was said that she'd predicted the dawn of a new celestial age, the Age of Pisces, the fish, immediately following her own, whose avatar would be a virgin-born king. The Sibyl could see mysterious connections, like spider threads spanning thousands of years, connecting the age of Pisces with that of Aquarius, the water-bearer, an age that would not dawn until twenty centuries later--which would be just about now.

As Clio slipped the leaves back into the vial and prepared to return to the surface, she feared she knew what this moment really meant. As her father had always imagined, by unearthing a bottle like this, a bottle filled with time, perhaps she'd opened a door that should have remained closed, a Pandora's box.

Tonight the Sibyl's song, which had lain mute in darkness beneath the volcano, had been reawakened for the first time in nearly two thousand years. Cleo and Aszi began their long walk through the caves, back to the surface.

The Witness

Snake River, Idaho
Early Spring, 1989

It was snowing. It had been snowing for days. It seemed the snow would never end.

I had been driving through the thick of it since well before dawn. I stopped at midnight in Jackpot, Nevada, the only pink neon glow in the sky through hundreds of miles of rocky wasteland, in my long ascent from California back to Idaho, back to my job at the nuclear site. There at Jackpot, against the jangle of slot machines, I sat at a counter and ate a grilled, blood-rare steak with fries, chugged a glass of Scotch whiskey and washed it down with a mug of hot black coffee--the multi-ingredient cure-all my uncle Earnest had always recommended to remedy this kind of stress and heartache. Then I went back out into the cold black night and hit the road again.

If I hadn't stopped back in the Sierras when the first fresh snow came down for the half day of skiing I'd suddenly felt I needed to soothe my aching soul, I wouldn't have been in this predicament now, sailing along on black ice in the middle of nowhere. At least this was a nowhere that I knew well--every wrinkle of road along this trek from the Rockies to the coast. I'd crossed it often enough on business, for my job as a nuclear security expert. Ariel Behn, girl nuke. But the reason for this last jaunt was a business I'd just as soon have missed.

I could feel my body, against my will, slipping into autopilot on that long, monotonous stretch of snowy highway, as the dark waters of my mind started pulling me back to a place I knew I didn't want to go. As the miles clicked away, the snow swirled around me. I heard the crunch of my studded tires as the black ice flowed beneath me.

But I could not erase from my mind the dappled color of the grassy slope back there in California--the smoothly geometric pattern of those tombstones moving across it, those thin, thin layers of stone and grass. All that separated life from death--all that separated me from Sam--forever.

The grass was electric green--that shimmering, wonderful green that only exists in San Francisco and only at this time of year. Against the brilliant lawn, the chalk-white gravestones marched in undulating rows across the hill. Dark eucalyptus trees towered over the cemetery between the rows of markers, their silver leaves dripping with water. I looked through the tinted windows of the limousine as we pulled from the main road and doubled back into the Presidio.

I had driven this road so many times when in the Bay Area. It was the only route from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco Marina, and it passed directly by the military cemetery we were entering. Today, observing it up close and in slow motion, it was all so beautiful, so ravishing to the eye.

"Sam would have loved being here," I said aloud, speaking for the first time during the ride.

Jersey, sitting beside me in the limo, said curtly: "Well, after all, he is here, isn't he? Or what's all the hoopla about?"

At these close quarters, I caught a whiff of her breath.

"Mother, how much have you had to drink?" I said. "You smell like a brewery."

"Cutty Sark," she said with a smile. "In honor of the Navy."

"For God's sake, this is a funeral," I said irritably.

"I'm Irish," she pointed out. "We call it a wake: drink the buggers on their merry way. In my opinion, a far more civilized tradition..."

She was already having trouble with the three-syllable words. Inwardly, I was cringing, hoping she wouldn't try to give part of the eulogy that was to be delivered by the military at graveside. I wouldn't put anything past her--especially in this state of incipient inebriation. And Augustus and Grace--my well-starched father and stepmother, who disapproved of everything--were in the car just behind.

The limousines pulled through the iron gates of the Presidio cemetery and slid on past the funeral parlor. There would be no indoor service, and the coffin was already sealed for reasons pertaining, we'd been told, to national security. Besides, as we had also been told--more discreetly--it might be hard to recognize Sam. Families of bombing victims usually preferred not to be afforded that opportunity.

The line of cars moved along Lincoln Avenue and pulled up the drive, sheltered by brooding eucalyptus, at the far end of the cemetery. Several cars were already parked there--all with the recognizable white license plates of the U.S. government. Atop the small knoll was a freshly dug open grave with a cluster of men standing around it. One was an army pastor, and one with a long, thick braid of hair looked like the shaman I'd asked for. Sam would have liked that.

Our three limos pulled up in front of the government cars: Jersey and I in the family car, Augustus and Grace behind us, and Sam in the car up front in a lead-lined coffin. We all got out and started up the hill as they unloaded Sam from the hearse. Augustus and Grace stood quietly aside, not mingling--which I frankly appreciated, so Jersey's breath wouldn't be a problem. Unless someone lit a match near her.

A man with dark glasses and a trench coat separated from the gaggle of government types and moved over to speak a few words to the other two family members. Then he approached Jersey and me.

I suddenly realized we weren't dressed for a funeral. I was wearing the only black dress I owned, one with purple and yellow hibiscus all over it. Jersey was in a chic French suit, that particular shade of ice blue which was her trademark when she was on the stage, because it matched her eyes. I hoped no one would notice our lapse in protocol.

"Mrs. Behn," the man addressed Jersey, "I hope you don't mind waiting a few more minutes? The president would like to be here for the ceremony."

He didn't mean the president, of course, but a former president: the one Jersey called the Peanut Farmer, whom she'd performed for when he was in the White House.

"Hell no," said Jersey. "I don't mind waiting if Sam doesn't!"

Then she laughed, and I got another waft. Though I couldn't see the man's eyes behind those glasses, I noticed that his mouth tightened into a thin line. I stared at him in stony silence.

The helicopter was coming down across the road, settling on the Crissy Field landing strip beside the bay. Two dark-paned cars had driven out to meet it, and to collect our distinguished guest.

"Mrs. Behn," the shaded one went on, sotto voce, as if in a spy movie, "I'm instructed to tell you that the president, acting on behalf of our current administration, has arranged this morning's agenda. Although your son, as a civilian adviser, was not technically a member of the military, his death took place while he was performing a service for...I should say rather, operating in an advisory capacity to the military. Our government therefore plans to honor him appropriately. There will be a small ceremony; a military band will play; then the deceased will be given the seventeen-gun salute in farewell. After that, the president plans to present to you the Distinguished Service Medal."

"What for?" said Jersey. "I ain't the one who died, Sugar."

The ceremony had not gone exactly as planned.

After it was over, Augustus and Grace had retired to their suite atop the Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill, sending a message that they were "expecting me" to join them for dinner. Since it was just lunch time, I took Jersey to the Buena Vista to drink her lunch. We found a wooden table at the front windows, overlooking the wharves and the bay.

"Ariel, honey, I'm really sorry about what happened," said Jersey, tossing down her first glass of scotch as if it were milk.

"Sorry doesn't help," I said, repeating a line of hers from my childhood, when I'd done something wrong. "I'm having dinner with Augustus and Grace tonight. What the hell am I supposed to say to them?"

"Fuck them," said Jersey, looking at me with those famous icy blue eyes, which seemed surprisingly clear, given her recent dietary habits. "Tell them that I was startled by the guns. It's true. I was startled by those damned guns going off in my ear."

"You knew they were going to give a seventeen-gun salute," I pointed out. "I was there when the security agent told you. You were as drunk as a skunk. That's why you fell into the grave--good God--in front of all those people!"

Jersey looked up at me in injured pride, and I glared back.

But all at once I felt it coming over me, and I just couldn't help myself. I started laughing. First Jersey's expression changed to surprise; then she started laughing, too. We laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. We laughed until we could no longer catch our breath. We were choking with laughter and holding our sides, at the thought of my mother sprawled, ass up, six feet down in a hole in the ground, before they even had a chance to lower the coffin.

"Right in front of the Peanut Farmer and everything," Jersey practically screamed, and this set us off on another peal.

"Right in front of Augustus and Grace," I gasped between hysterical sobs.

It took a long time to run down, but at last we subsided into moans and chuckles. I wiped my tears with my napkin and leaned back with a sigh, holding my stomach, which was raw from laughter.

"I wish Sam could have seen what you did," I told Jersey, squeezing her arm. "It was so bizarre--just what tickled his funny bone. He would have died laughing."

"He died anyway," said Jersey. And she ordered another drink.

At seven o'clock I arrived at the Mark in the limo Augustus sent for me. He hired a car whenever he visited any city so he'd never have to degrade himself flagging down a cab. My father was into appearances. I told the driver to collect me at ten p.m. and take me back to the little Victorian inn where I was staying across the bridge. Three hours of Augustus and Grace, as I knew from experience, would be more than adequate.

Their penthouse hotel suite was large and filled with the lavish flower arrangements Grace required in any surroundings. Augustus opened the door when I knocked and regarded me sternly. My father was always elegant, with his silvery hair and tan complexion. Now, in a black cashmere blazer and gray trousers, he looked every bit the part of the feudal lord he'd been rehearsing for all his life.

"You're late," he said, glancing at his gold wristwatch. "You were to arrive at six-thirty so we could speak privately before dinner."

"This morning was enough of a family reunion for me," I told him.

I instantly regretted having alluded to the earlier events of the day.

"And that's something else I want to speak with you about: your mother," said Augustus. "First, what can I fix you to drink?"

"I had lunch with Jersey," I said. "I'm not sure I need anything much stronger than water."

Wherever Augustus went, he had a well-stocked bar set up, though he drank little himself. Maybe that's what went wrong when he and my mother were married.

"I'll fix you a spritzer; that's light," he said, and squirted the soda from a mesh-encased bottle, handing the wineglass to me.

"Where's Grace?" I asked, taking a sip as he mixed himself a light Scotch.

"She's lying down. She was quite upset by that little debacle your mother pulled this morning--and who can blame her? It was unforgivable." Augustus always referred to Jersey as your mother--as though I were responsible for her very existence, rather than the other way around.

"Actually," I told him, "I felt her display provided a well-needed touch of brightness to the entire morbid affair. I mean, I can't really imagine playing brass bands, shooting off guns, and giving someone a medal--all because, in the service of the U.S. government, he got himself blown to pieces like a dismembered patchwork quilt!"

"Don't change the subject on me, young lady," my father reprimanded me in his most authoritarian tone of voice. "Your mother's behavior was absolutely shocking. Deplorable. We were fortunate that reporters were not permitted."

Augustus would never use words like "disgusting" or "humiliating"; they were too subjective, involving personal emotion. He was only interested in the objective, the remote--things like appearance and reputation. Not feelings, which were ambiguous and beyond quantification.

In that regard, I was a good deal more like him than I cared to admit. But I still couldn't bear the fact that he was more interested in my mother's comportment at a social event than in Sam's brutal death.

"I wonder if people scream, when they die like that?" I asked aloud.

Augustus turned on his heel so I couldn't see his face. He went across to the bedroom door.

"I'll wake up Grace," he informed me over his shoulder, "so she'll be ready in time for dinner."

"I don't see how we can speak," said Grace, blotting her eyes, which were swollen with tears, and brushing a wisp of stark blonde hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "I don't see how we can eat. It's truly incredible to imagine how we can all be sitting here in a restaurant, trying to behave like human beings."

Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that someone like Grace had ever visualized the concept of attempting to behave like a human being. Things were starting to look up.

I glanced around at the walls of the restaurant, which were done up with lattices covered in painted vines. They were scattered with a few tiny red lizards, which seemed to be basking in invisible sunlight. The table groupings were separated by large plantings of fresh chrysanthemums--flowers which are offered in tribute to the dead in all Italian cemeteries.

I'd begun and ended the day in a cemetery. Only that afternoon, I'd looked up the word in a bookstore. From Greek: koimeterion, a sleeping chamber; koiman, to put to sleep; cunae, a cradle. It was nice to think of Sam, wherever he was, as cradled in sleep.

"He was so young," Grace was saying between little sobs as she took another bite of steak tartare. She adjusted her diamond bracelet, adding the telltale words, "Wasn't he?"

The truth of the matter was, Grace had never met Sam in her life. My mother's divorce from Augustus had been nearly twenty-five years ago, and he and Grace had been married for little more than fifteen. In between was lots of proverbial water beneath the bridge, including how Sam got to be my brother without actually being the son of my mother or father. My family relations are rather complex.

But I had no time to think of that, for Grace had moved on to her favorite topic: money. As she switched to it, her tears miraculously dried and her eyes took on a luminous glow.

"We phoned the lawyers this afternoon from the suite," she told me, suddenly filled with buoyant enthusiasm. "The reading of the will, as you know, is tomorrow, and I think I should tell you that we got some good news. Though they won't give out the details, of course, it does appear that you are the principal heir!"

"Oh, goody," I said. "Sam hasn't been dead a week, and already I've profited. Did you dig out exactly how rich I'll be? Can I retire from my labors right now? Or are the tax folks likely to take most of it?"

"That's not what Grace meant, and you know it,"said Augustus, who was designing forms in his crŹme de volaille as I jabbed at the capers on my Scottish salmon. They rolled around the plate and evaded my fork. "Grace and I are only concerned for your own interest," he went on. "I didn't know Sam--at least not well--but I'm sure he cared a great deal for you. After all, you practically grew up as brother and sister, didn't you? And, as Earnest's only heir himself, Sam must have been very...well, comfortable financially?"

My late uncle Earnest, who'd been in the mining and mineral business, was my father's older brother, and rich as Midas. On top of that, he died with every cent he'd made, because spending money was of no interest to him. Sam was his only child.

When my parents, Augustus and Jersey, divorced, I was still very tiny. My mother ran around with me for a number of years, visiting all the capitals of the world. She was welcome in such places, since she'd been a famous singer long before marrying my father--which is how she met the Peanut Farmer and nearly everyone else of high social visibility. The Behn men had always liked flamboyant women. But, like my father, they often had trouble actually living with them.

Jersey had been drinking for years, but everyone expected opera singers to be swilling champagne as if it were water. It wasn't until Augustus announced his betrothal to Grace--a clone of Jersey at a similar age, but now twenty years her junior--that the bottle came out of Jersey's closet. She fled with me to Idaho, to consult my widowed, hermitlike uncle Earnest about financial matters (my father had invested all her earlier musical income in himself--another Behn male trait), and to everyone's surprise, Jersey and Earnest fell in love.

And I--a child who'd grown up like Eloise at the Plaza, eating pacirc;t´ de foie gras before I could pronounce it--suddenly found myself in the middle of a nowhere that I now, nearly twenty years later, called home.

So my father's question, seemingly vague, was really direct and to the point. My mother, married to two consecutive brothers, had actually stopped drinking during Earnest's lifetime. Knowing her as he did, though, Earnest left his all money to Sam, with a proviso to take care of her and of me "as he deemed best." And now Sam himself was dead. In all likelihood, his death made me a multimillionaire.

Uncle Earnest died seven years ago, when I'd just entered college, and none of us had seen Sam since. He simply vanished. Jersey and I got our two checks every month. She drank hers, and I put mine into an account and left it there. Meanwhile, I did something radical--something the Behn family women had never done. I got a job.

It was when I started working as a nuclear security officer, my first week on the job, that I heard from Sam. He phoned at my office, though God knows how he knew where I was.

"Hi, hotshot," Sam said--his favorite name for me ever since we were children. "You've broken a family tradition: no high notes or high kicks in the chorus line?"

"Life upon the wicked stage ain't ever what a girl supposes.'" I quoted from my vast, unsolicited musical repertoire. But was I ever happy to hear his voice. "Where have you been all these years, blood brother? You don't need gainful employment, I gather, now that you're the full-time family benefactor. Thanks for all the checks."

"In fact," Sam corrected me, "I'm gainfully employed by a variety of governments that shall remain unnamed. I provide a service no one else can--with the possible exception of those who've been hand-trained by me, a group of one. Maybe one day you'll consider going into a joint venture?"

And that cryptic hint of a job offer was the last I'd heard of Sam until my phone call from the executor.

I felt the tires start to suck under the snow. The whole car was sliding, pulling with a riptide force off the road.

Adrenaline rushed with a hot gush up to my brain as I snapped to and gripped the steering wheel. With all my strength, throwing my whole weight behind it, I yanked those massive tons of steel back from the edge of the shoulder. But now I was hurtling in the opposite direction, out of control. (Chapter One continues...)