CYCLE C  |  Book 2 

Border of Solitudes

PREVIEW | Border of Solitudes

Miriam LaMarca wished she could assume a new role.  The one she's inhabiting now, that of a powerless observer, didn't suit her.  But she's stuck with it.

What is she observing?  Four people.  First and foremost, there's Kari, a young woman Miriam regards as a daughter.  The others are Malory Ballantyne, Hans Eric Ramm, and Araceli Donovan.

Kari is now at Doña Socorro, her godfather Baltasar's ranch in the Extremadura.  She's under his watchful eye, while she recovers from injuries she'd suffered trying to recover a package from a derelict ship that was being dismantled at a shipbreaking yard located on Alang Beach in India.  While convalescing in a hospital near Alang, Malory came to take her to an uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides, an island where he has a small cottage he likes to refer to as his "castle."  If Baltasar is to be believed, the therapy she received there ended too soon.  Her physical injuries, burns and bruises, were now mostly healed.  But her heart had gone downhill.  In Baltasar's expert medical opinion, she's now suffering from an acute case of solitude.

Malory is presently in Leiden meeting with an unnamed colleague who has evidently located a precious manuscript somewhere in the Indian subcontinent — a manuscript that might be of considerable interest to Kari.  Malory is hoping to see it moved to Lucerna and to then set up an arrangement that would allow Kari to work on it.  Miriam had tried to learn something about the colleague, but she'd gotten nowhere.  Malory wouldn't even give her a name.  His evasiveness was perplexing.

Hans Eric Ramm was the reason Kari found herself on Alang Beach.  He knows the location of a treasure ship that sank four centuries ago.  But he doesn’t know its identity.  He believes it might have been under the command of Sir Francis Drake when he made his famous crossing of the Pacific.  The task of proving this is one that he's put in front of Kari.

Kari isn't the only young woman Eric induced to identify the treasure ship.  Araceli Donovan is another.  Araceli is a businesswoman whose home base is Manila.  She also has an office in Hong Kong.  The fact that she turned up here in Lucerna and immediately found her way into Eric's good graces, and that she'd quickly formed a friendship with Kari, aroused Miriam's suspicions. 

Kari would soon be back here, back in Lucerna.  Miriam invited the girl to stay at her place, at least for a time.  But Kari politely declined.  She said that solitude is as much company as she can now handle.