The black-brown eyes turned to her. “Shit,” he said.

She stared back at him, insolent and unapologetic. “Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Stark.”

“Jesus Christ, why the hell couldn’t you stay out of this?”

So this was the American reporter, Wilhelmina thought, observing him with interest. He was rather tough-looking, with dark, distant eyes, but there was something in the scarred face she found compelling. Nothing obvious or boastful-just there. Competence, knowledge, pain. If she had to guess, she would say this was a man who understood that objectivity wasn’t so easy to maintain. In her mind, that was good. She believed objectivity was wrong.

She glanced at Juliana, whose expression was one of distaste mixed with acceptance-and, she thought, excitement. How interesting. Juliana often seemed so vague and bored with the real things of life, at least from what Wilhelmina could tell from her limited experience with her niece.

Matthew Stark sighed heavily, dread clouding his eyes, and Wilhelmina felt her heart skid. This was not a man given easily to emotion. Something was wrong.

“I gather you two don’t know.” He paused, his mouth straight and hard, but not uncaring. “Johannes Peperkamp was found dead of a heart attack earlier today in Amsterdam. He’d left his shop with a Dutchman whom I have reason to believe was named Hendrik de Geer. I’m sorry.”

Amsterdam, Wilhelmina thought. Of course, Amsterdam.

Hendrik…

She closed her eyes, hardly noticing how they burned, and her mind filled with images, old pictures, living now only inside her. She saw her brother as a young man, tall and laughing as he swept beautiful Ann onto the ice.

“Aunt Willie, are you all right?”

Juliana’s soft voice, filled with grief and shock, broke into her memories, and Wilhelmina took the last step down into the entryway, level with Matthew Stark. Juliana followed unsteadily. Catharina had spoiled her daughter, Wilhelmina thought. Juliana knew so little of the world. She had money and sophistication, fine clothes and a magnificent education, an incomparable talent, but she’d experienced cold or hunger or even death, as common as it was. Now Johannes was dead. And Rachel. Juliana’s white, frozen face seemed inconsequential. Wilhelmina found it difficult to feel sympathy toward someone who’d never really suffered.

And it was sad-wrong-that her niece had never really known her own uncle. But that wasn’t Juliana’s fault. None of this was her fault, and Wilhelmina regretted her silent criticism. Juliana was good and kind, and Wilhelmina was proud of her. She was her niece, the last of the Peperkamps.

Oh, my God.

But Wilhelmina shook off this thought. It strained her imagination to think Johannes would have turned over the Minstrel’s Rough and four hundred years of Peperkamp tradition to their pianist niece. Even at her best, Juliana wouldn’t be likely to take the Minstrel tradition seriously. Not since Amsterdam had any of the Peperkamp siblings mentioned the stone. Surely Johannes had tossed it into the sea. And yet, how could he?

Dear God, Wilhelmina thought with a sharp, sudden, terrible sense of loss. My brother is dead. Gone.

“I’m all right,” she said finally, because she had to, for herself if no one else. “Johannes lived a long life. He was a good man.”

“I know,” Juliana said.

Wilhelmina looked at Matthew Stark, his expression unreadable as he watched Juliana. Yet she could feel the tension in him, telling him to stay where he stood when what he wanted to do was to go to Juliana. Ahh, no, she thought, he’s half in love with her already.

The dark eyes lifted to the old Dutchwoman. “You’re Juliana’s aunt-Willie, is it?”

“Wilhelmina,” she said, her voice clear and strong. There was nothing now to do but go on. Find Hendrik. Stop him. She would mourn her brother forever, but in private. Meanwhile, it seemed there was work to be done. Hendrik-what treachery are you up to this time? “My name is Wilhelmina Peperkamp.”

“Another Peperkamp. Johannes and Catharina’s sister?”

“Yes. I live in Rotterdam.”

“Do you know why your brother was in Amsterdam?”

“To pick up diamonds.” The lie came without effort; she had no reason to trust this American, no reason to tell him anything. “I’m feeding his cat.”

“You came all the way from Rotterdam to feed a cat? Okay, if that’s the way you want it. Don’t tell me a damn thing if you don’t want to. I’ll find out what I need to on my own. Just go back home, both of you. Get the hell out of this mess.”

“We’ll keep your advice in mind, Mr. Stark,” Wilhelmina said impatiently. She hated to be told what to do. “But right now you’ve brought us sad news, and I think you should go.”

“All right. Do you know anything about Hendrik de Geer?”

“Goeden dag, Mr. Stark.”

“That means?”

“Goodbye.”

Stark turned his hard gaze to Juliana. “You want me to leave?”

Juliana stared at him a moment, and Wilhelmina could see the doubt in her niece’s eye. My heavens, she thought, Juliana wants to tell him no! Achh, what was this?

But Juliana nodded stoically. “Yes, I think you’d better.”

Without a word, Matthew spun around and left. Wilhelmina stood beside Juliana and watched him pound down the steep front stairs. “A difficult man,” she said.

“I know, but I’m not sure it’s wise to let him go off on his own like this, Aunt Willie. He knows things he hasn’t told us.”

“And we know things we haven’t told him, don’t we?”

“Yes, but-” Juliana’s jaw set hard. “I don’t know about you, Aunt Willie, but I have no intention of just going home and forgetting about this-and no Vermont, either, dammit.”

“Vermont? What’s in Vermont?”

“Safety. Innocence. It’s where Mother wants me to go.”

“Bah. Some things you cannot escape. Shall we go?”

“Where? I’d like to follow Stark back to the United States-”

“So would I.”

“But you don’t have a passport.”

“I do. I planned one day to go to New York to see your mother, but I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“She was the one who left.”

“I should have guessed. You have your passport with you?”

“Yes. When I decided to go to Antwerp this morning, I thought I might have to go to New York, to see your mother.” Hendrik, she thought, Hendrik…Had it finally come to this? She felt so tired suddenly, so old. “Come, we’ll have to take care we’re not followed.”

She gave the eel to the landlord, who had been standing by unobtrusively, and explained she would be back later to settle her brother’s affairs.

“What happened?” Martin Dekker asked, apparently not having followed the English exchange. “Where’s your brother?”

She looked at the Belgian and said, her voice quiet and steady, “He’s dead, Mr. Dekker. Johannes is gone.”

Fifteen

U.S . Senator Samuel Ryder, Jr., adopted a carefully constructed expression of pensiveness and control as he looked across his walnut desk to the wine-colored leather chair where Hendrik de Geer sat, rumpled, ashen-faced, spent, tired old man, reeking of sweat and gin. Ryder felt no sympathy. His aides had volunteered to call security-had pleaded with him to let them call-but the senator had refused. He’d insisted de Geer be ushered into his office, into the quiet, formal surroundings of a United States senator.

The room was unchanged from the days when it had been occupied by Samuel Ryder, Sr., the longtime senior senator from Florida. When elected, Sam had brought out all the furnishings that had been in storage-the desk, the carpets, the chairs, the mementos. Everything. There was only one addition: a portrait. It had been painted shortly before the senior Ryder’s death, an ominous picture of a man remembered for his soft baby blue eyes and deadly incisiveness, and it hung above the desk, behind his son, where Sam, Jr., wouldn’t have to look at it all the time.