The Laughter of Dead Kings (5 page)

“Blenkiron’s name does come to mind,” John agreed. “Though the word exotic is more accurate than bizarre. The paintings were
beautiful. Tut isn’t. Anyhow, you and I and Schmidt did our share of the foiling.”

“Is that supposed to be a happy thought?”

“I can’t believe Blenkiron is responsible for this. He collects art objects, not curiosities, and if he were the sort of man to hold a grudge, he wouldn’t focus on Feisal. However, you have raised a point I hadn’t considered—the timing. What do you know about Khifaya’s background?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “When I spoke of making enemies, I was thinking about his position rather than his personal history. His predecessor made a huge point of demanding that foreign museums and collectors return Egypt’s stolen antiquities, and Khifaya seems to be intent on carrying on the good work.”

“‘Stolen’ isn’t strictly accurate in some cases,” John said. “The Rosetta Stone—”

“I know more than I need to know about the Rosetta Stone. But you, of all people, can’t deny that a number of museums and private collectors have objects whose provenance is dubious.”

“I take leave to resent that implication,” John said primly. “Why do you keep wandering off the subject? All I said was that Khifaya’s background might bear investigation.”

“A nasty divorce? Hey, is he married?”

“Don’t be frivolous.” John glanced at his watch and rose. “Let’s go.”

“It’s a good picture. If we go to Egypt, maybe I can get him to autograph it. ‘To dear Vicky, my biggest fan.’”

John’s lip curled in one of his elegant sneers.

“He’s even handsomer than Feisal. Or,” I said, struck by a new and inspiring thought, “maybe he’ll let me be one of his friends next time he pickets the museum.”

Content to be towed by a masterful hand on my arm (so I could
go on admiring the picture of my new crush), I didn’t take note of where we were going until we arrived at the gate.

“Hey,” I said, digging in my heels. “This is the wrong flight. It’s not going to London.”

“Neither are we.” He had timed it perfectly; the last passengers were lined up. He handed over our boarding passes and propelled me forward.

“Why are we going to Rome? When did you change plans? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t change plans.”

“But you told Feisal—”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you…” Now that I thought back on his reference to London, he hadn’t actually said we were going there. “Damn it, I don’t want to go to Rome. Please don’t tell me you mean to confer with Pietro and whatsername and the other crooks you were working with when we first met.”

“All in the past, my dear, the distant past. In point of fact I hope to confer with someone at the Vatican. Here’s your seat.”

He went on to find his, leaving me in a frenzy of speculation. Someone at the Vatican. Not the pope. Surely not the pope. Not John.

I had ample time for reflection during the flight. Unfortunately, all I could do was go over and over the same ground, like a cat chasing its tail, getting nowhere. Not one cat, several of them, a random feline ballet, interwoven and endless. Suzi. Rome. Tutankhamon. Why in heaven’s name would anybody steal Tutankhamon? Why would anybody want to steal it…him? What would you do with him once you had him? You couldn’t stick him away in an attic or a closet, he’d require…What does a mummy require? Controlled temperature, sterile atmosphere, room service?

I jerked awake from a dream that featured an air-conditioned suite in the best hotel in Cairo, and Tutankhamon laid out on a Posturepedic mattress surrounded by harem beauties in white nurses’ uniforms.

I had planned to intercept John when he passed my seat, but everybody was pushing and shoving and I didn’t catch up with him until I reached the baggage area.

“Not the pope,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” He raised one eyebrow, in that maddening way of his.

“All right, not the pope. Who? And if you say ‘Who what?’ I will lie down on the floor and kick and scream.”

“Not here, someone will trample you underfoot.” He turned and ran a seemingly casual eye over the passengers who were shoving and pushing as they waited for the belt to deliver their luggage. Nothing unusual about them that I could see: the young mother shepherding two darling kiddies who were beating at each other with stuffed bunnies; the self-important business types yelling into their cell phones; two priests in black cassocks; a pair of twenty-somethings, nationality indeterminate, wound round each other like pretzels; a little gray-haired lady wearing sunglasses and carrying an enormous purse…Nobody brandishing an UZI or a deadly vial of shampoo.

“Nobody could have followed us onto that plane,” I declared. “I didn’t even know we were taking it.”

“Precisely.”

B
y the time we got through passport and customs it was late evening and I was starved. I informed John of this.

He didn’t even respond with a raised eyebrow. Taking me by the arm, he hustled me out of the airport, past a line of waiting taxis.
Pausing by an anonymous dark sedan, he opened the back door, shoved me in, and followed me.

“What—” I began.

“Quiet,” said my beloved. Leaning forward, he pressed a knuckle into the back of the driver’s neck.

“Albatross,” he said.

“Ancient mariner,” replied the driver, and giggled. The car pulled smoothly away from the curb.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “How paranoid can you get?”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean—”

“I am familiar with the reference.”

“This is Enrico.”

“How do you know?” The man was as anonymous as the vehicle. He wore one of those chauffeur-type peaked caps, which would have made it difficult to see his face even if it hadn’t been dark and he hadn’t been looking forward.

“I’d know that giggle anywhere,” said John.

Enrico obligingly produced another giggle and a polite
“Buona sera, signorina.”

John turned to look out the back window. Apparently he was satisfied by what he saw, or didn’t see; after a while he returned his attention to me.

“You may now finish your question,” he said graciously.

I refused to give him the satisfaction of asking the obvious. Obviously he had set this up before we left Munich, at the same time he had changed our reservations. Obviously the driver was one of his old acquaintances. Obviously he was deathly afraid of being followed, which meant—obviously—that he had reason to suspect he would be followed.

“Never mind,” I muttered.

A chilly silence ensued. At least it was silent in the backseat. Enrico began crooning in an off-key falsetto. It took me a while to recognize the tune: one of Cherubino’s arias from
The Marriage of Figaro
. I joined in, hoping to annoy John. He is an excellent musician with well-nigh perfect pitch, which cannot be said of me. Except for twitching a bit when Enrico and I tried for a high note and missed, he did not react. Enrico told me I had a beautiful voice. We sang more Mozart, all the way into Rome, at which point I looked out the side window and tried to figure out where we were going, since I was damned if I was going to ask John.

The narrow streets of Trastevere gave me the clue. When we stopped in front of a small hotel I said, “Well, well, here we are again. I’m surprised the cops haven’t closed this place down. If you are representative of its customary clientele—”

“Shut up and get out,” John snarled.

It hadn’t changed a bit. The same quiet, rather elegant lobby, the same creaky lift, and, of course, the same room. The same heavy off-white drapes, the same cozy little sitting area, with a red plush love seat and low table, the same bathroom. The same bed.

“You didn’t even let me say good night to Enrico,” I said, seating myself on the red plush and crossing my legs.

John tossed his suitcase onto the bed and began unpacking.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

John stiffened, gave me a piercing look, and then relaxed. “You’re always hungry. Call room service. You remember the procedure, I trust?”

That and a lot of other things, I thought, as I picked up the phone. John had brought me here after the end of our Roman escapade—if I may use such a light-hearted word to describe a scenario that included murder, attempted murder (of me), grand theft, fraud, another murder, attempted seduction (of me), and a spectacular ner
vous breakdown (not me). The hotel didn’t have a restaurant; if a guest wanted anything, from a gourmet meal to a piano, he called the front desk and asked for it—and got it. On the occasion of my first stay I had requested medical supplies and copious quantities of booze, in addition to food. The booze was for me. My nerves were in terrible shape. The medical supplies were for John, who had incurred a number of well-deserved injuries. He’d been one of the gang initially and had come over to my side only because…Well, to make a long story short, by the time we left the hotel next day I was inclined to believe he had repented of his evil deeds and learned to care deeply for me. At least I believed it until the next time we met…

With a sigh, I picked up the phone. “What do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Give it to me.” John took the telephone. “You don’t know anything about wine.”

“I know I want lots of it.”

The wine arrived almost at once. It was red. The waiter slithered silently out; John sat down next to me and raised his glass. “Cheers.”

“Is it the pope?”

“I knew you were going to say that,” John remarked with satisfaction. “That’s one of the reasons why I love you. Your bull-headed one-track mind. No, dear, it isn’t His Holiness. I don’t move in such exalted circles.”

“Shouldn’t you check to see whether Feisal has called?” I held out my empty glass.

“And I love the way you leap from one non sequitur to another. He’s barely had time to reach Cairo. Anything from Schmidt?”

I hadn’t bothered to turn my cell phone on after we landed, since I didn’t particularly want to hear from anybody, especially Schmidt. When I did so, I found not one but three text messages from him.
Schmidt adores texting. He adores every new gadget until the next one comes along.

“Clara bit Suzi,” I reported.

“Good for Clara.”

“The damn woman has the run of my house. What do you suppose she—”

“Suzi is an unknown quantity and the least of our worries at the moment. She can’t have any knowledge of—shall we refer to it henceforth as Feisal’s loss?”

“She’d taken up with Schmidt before it happened,” I conceded.

“Anything else?”

“Just the usual. Oh, there’s the waiter. Good. I’m—”

“Starved. I know.” John went to the door and opened it. The hallway outside was discreetly dim, but I made out a cheering sight—a cart loaded with serving dishes. The waiter was an undersized youth possessed of an oversized mustache; grunting with effort, he propelled the cart forward.

John let him get all the way into the room before he moved. The boy let out a shriek as his arm was yanked back and up. The gun he had been holding hit the floor with a thud.

D
on’t just sit there, do something,” John gasped. His prisoner was squirming and writhing and directing ineffectual blows at John’s midriff.

“Hit him,” I suggested.

“That would be unkind and unnecessary,” said a fourth party.

He stood in the doorway, pretty nearly filling it. His mustache was even larger than the boy’s. His gun was bigger too.

“Idiota,”
he remarked, addressing the boy.

“Scusi, Papa,”
said the boy. He kept swinging at John, who had shifted his grip and was holding the kid out at arm’s length. The mustache hung by a thread, or rather, a hair, and the face now visible to my wondering eyes was spotted with pimples.

“Let him go, you big bully,” I said.

“Damn it,” said John.

“Let us compose ourselves,” said the newcomer, in a fruity baritone. “Sir John, I beg you will release my incompetent offspring.
Giuseppe, sit down and behave yourself. Signorina, my compliments.”

John dropped Giuseppe and gestured pointedly at the gun the big man held. “The atmosphere of cordiality would be improved if you would put that away, Bernardo, old chap.”

“Certainly. It was only meant to get your attention.”

“It did that,” I said, watching Bernardo stow the gun away in one pocket. He scooped up the weapon his son had dropped, and shoved it into another pocket. They did not improve the hang of his coat.

Bernardo chuckled. “You haven’t taken to carrying a weapon, have you?” he inquired of John.

John took his empty hands out of his own pockets. “How much did you pay Enrico?” he asked.

“You do him a grave injustice. It was not necessary for me to bribe him. Your arrival was noted and reported. Signorina.” He bowed gracefully. “May I offer you a glass of wine?”

“Only if you’re paying for it.”

This sally produced a shout of laughter. “Ah, she is witty as well as beautiful! I get it, as you say in America! Then may I beg that you will offer me a glass?”

I was beginning to like Bernardo. He was about John’s height, and about twice his breadth, especially through the chest and shoulders. He had an outdoorsman’s finely lined skin, eyebrows almost as oversized as his mustache, and a head of black hair so impeccably smooth it looked like a designer toupee. He bared a set of expensively capped teeth, and took a chair opposite me.

At his father’s request, Giuseppe produced another glass and we all settled down round the table. Giuseppe kept rubbing his wrist and shooting malevolent glances at John.

“None for him,” said Bernardo, indicating his son. “He does not deserve any. How true it is, your English saying, that one should
never send a boy to do the work of a man. The mustache, as I tried to tell him, was a mistake.”

“Why did you send him, then?” I asked curiously.

“He must learn sometime. To your health, signorina. And to yours, my dear old friend.”

John acknowledged the salute with a sour smile. “What do you want, Bernardo?”

“Simple.” The big man put his empty glass on the table and leaned forward. “I want in on the deal.”

A
fter our uninvited guests had taken their leave, John made sure the door was locked. “If you had bothered to close the door while I was subduing the incompetent offspring, Bernardo wouldn’t have got in.”

“He’d have got in one way or another,” I said, lifting covers. “Anyhow, what was the harm? He was very nice. Veal scaloppini? Tomato-and-mozzarella salad? Osso buco?”

“Don’t overdo it, Vicky.”

He wasn’t talking about the food. Abandoning my attempt at positive reinforcement, I went to him and put my arms round his neck. “As Bernardo might say, I do get it, John. He’s heard about—er—Feisal’s bereavement, and if he knows, so do a lot of other people. But he doesn’t know who pulled it off.”

“He thinks I did. What he was offering, in case you missed it, was to act as middleman in helping me dispose of it.”

“It wasn’t so much an offer as a demand,” I mused. “At least we know he wasn’t the one who stole Tut.”

“Splendid,” John said sourly. “We can cross one name off the endless list. I didn’t suppose he was; he’s never been known to operate outside western Europe.”

I couldn’t think offhand of anything positive to say about that. I carried my filled plate to the table.

“Eat something. Your blood sugar is probably low. Good Lord, listen to me. I sound like Schmidt.”

“Don’t mention his name. You might conjure him up, like a helpful elf.”

I looked up. He was watching me, his mouth curved in a smile. “I don’t deserve you,” he said softly.

“I was under the impression that you did.”

“I didn’t do it, Vicky.”

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” I put my fork down. “That’s why you’re so nobly intent on tracking down the real thieves. Not for Feisal’s sake, but because you realized you’d be the prime suspect. No wonder! It’s precisely the sort of insane operation you once specialized in. Like the time you tried to build Camelot in the back pasture.”

John wandered over to the cart and busied himself removing covers and shifting plates around. “Jen would be deeply offended to hear you refer to the grounds of our stately manor as a pasture. You are, of course, correct.”

“And the time you tried to pose as an archaeologist so you could dig up a cache of buried treasure and—”

“Make off with the loot,” John said with a reminiscent smile. “You don’t know the half of it, darling. Did I ever tell you about—”

“I don’t want to hear about it. I want to hear about Bernardo. How did he find out?”

“He did rather avoid answering that question, didn’t he?” John joined me on the settee. Bending over, he inspected the underside of the table.

“What are you looking for?” I asked. “Oh my God. Did he put—”

“There was one under the shelf of the cart.” John took it out of his pocket, dropped it onto the floor, and stamped on it. “I was watching his hands, and I don’t think he managed to get another under the table.”

“What about the phone?”

“Bernardo didn’t know we were here until we were. Here, that is to say.”

“He seems like a civilized sort of guy,” I said, trying to look on the bright side. “No threats, no intimidation.”

“Aren’t you forgetting those large guns? Believe me, love, he will turn very uncivilized when he realizes I’m not going to cut him in, for the simple reason that I can’t. At the moment, thanks to my quick thinking and incessant talking, he thinks we are in the first stage of negotiation.”

“How long can you keep it up?” I asked, remembering those large guns.

“Not long enough, I fear.”

“Why don’t you try telling him the truth?”

“Good heavens,” said John, eyes widening. “What a novel idea. Because, you ingenuous young woman, he wouldn’t believe me. For some reason I have great difficulty convincing people of my veracity.”

The night passed without incident. John slept like a log, and as I tossed and turned I remembered another of the quotations he was fond of repeating: “The worse a man is, the more profound his slumber; for if he had a conscience he would not be a villain.” However, I felt a little easier in my mind now that I had (finally!) figured out what was driving him. If he were only going through the motions, pretending to be unwitting, he wouldn’t go to so much trouble.

Or would he? What if this trip had another motive? An excuse
to get in touch with one of the other people involved in the theft, perhaps? In order to pass on instructions or receive a progress report? Communication by almost any other means could be intercepted. Hell, our government is listening in on half the world, and if they can do it, anybody can.

“Damn,” I said loudly. John grunted and turned over.

I finally got to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, or so it seemed, I was aroused by John, who was wearing one of his swishiest dressing gowns. “Didn’t you sleep well?” he asked solicitously, offering me a cup of coffee. Room service had come and gone, presumably without firearms.

I growled and snatched the cup. He stood watching me, tapping his foot, until I had finished the first cup and was halfway through the second. “Sorry to rush you,” he said, “but our appointment is at ten. Pop into the shower, why don’t you, and then we’ll have breakfast out.”

He followed me into the bathroom and helpfully adjusted the shower. Having reached a state of relative alertness by then, I expected he would join me. Instead he murmured softly, “We didn’t say anything last night that would put Bernardo on his guard, but from now on watch what you say. In fact, I would prefer that you say nothing except yes and no.”

“What—”

“Just keep quiet and listen. Cram all your vital belongings into that dreadful backpack of yours. Leave everything that is not absolutely essential. We won’t be returning to the hotel after our appointment.”

“Okay.”

Both of John’s eyebrows rose in a look of exaggerated surprise. “No argument? No questions?”

“I’m not exactly stupid, you know.”

“I do know. I’d kiss you if you weren’t so wet.” He handed me a towel and left the room.

We had brief but silent arguments over some of the items I considered essential. I lost most of them. He was right, damn him. Trust is not a conspicuous characteristic of evildoers. Bernardo would assume John had been lying through his teeth and that he would bolt if he got a chance. Finding our personal possessions still in situ might delay him temporarily.

I had hoped to scrounge another cup of coffee, but by the time we got through sorting things and gesticulating at each other, the hour of our appointment was upon us. Conspicuously sans luggage, we left the hotel and strolled to the corner, where John hailed a taxi.

He couldn’t have selected a more conspicuous spot for a rendezvous. The via della Conciliazione runs from Vatican Square to the bridge. It is lined with souvenir shops and cafés and it is always packed with people, tour buses, and taxis, and it echoes with the roaring of engines and the curses of drivers stuck in traffic. The soaring dome of Saint Peter’s rose pearly white against an azure sky, remote and eternal amid the hubbub.

The man we were to meet was waiting for us at a table outside one of the cafés. He wore a black cassock and a black biretta. Being on good terms with God (or his local representative) makes a man healthy and wise, if not wealthy; he had plump rosy cheeks, an expression of innocent amiability, and a pair of the shrewdest dark eyes I had ever beheld. He greeted John with a fond Italian embrace, hugs and kisses on both cheeks, and me with a bow and a smile. He didn’t look surprised to see me, and John did not introduce us.

I tucked into a hearty breakfast of pane and jam and butter and lots more coffee, while the other two conversed. My Italian is pretty good, but the Roman dialect isn’t easy to follow, especially when it
is spoken at top speed and when the ambient noise level is high. As every spy and would-be spy knows, the safest place for a meeting is not on a lonely heath but in the middle of a crowd. Even if you are followed, the other guy can’t get close enough to overhear anything without practically sitting on your lap.

I still had a couple of chunks of bread to go when John tossed a suspiciously large roll of money onto the table and got to his feet. I’d been expecting him to move fast when he did move (as I kept telling him, I’m not stupid) so I crammed bread into my mouth with one hand, grabbed my backpack with the other, and let him tow me out into the middle of the via della Conciliazione. Brakes squealed and drivers waxed profane, and an alert taxi driver came to a shuddering stop. A final glance over my shoulder showed Monsignor Anonymous nodding and waving like a plump puppet, and a weedy youth shaking his fist at the air.

“Well done,” said John breathlessly. In response to the driver’s question, he said, “Cavalieri Hilton. Double fare if you make it in less than twenty minutes.”

“You have just signed our death warrant,” I said, remembering how Romans drive even when they lack monetary incentives.

“I am trying to avoid doing precisely that” was the reply. “Did you spot Giuseppe?”

“Uh-huh. He blended in nicely with the other slouching teenagers, but he really ought to do something about that acne. Bernardo must be short-handed. The kid isn’t up to this sort of thing.”

“Be fair. Few people would be.”

The walls of Vatican City passed in a jerky blur, and I stopped trying to carry on a conversation and concentrated on holding on. We made it in less than twenty minutes; it took less than thirty seconds to leave the first taxi and get into another. This time our destination was the airport.

“Where to now?” I inquired, getting a firm grip on the armrest. “Munich? London? Egypt? Kathmandu? What do I get if I guess right? A new wardrobe, maybe?”

John was staring out the back window, watching the taxis that had left the rank after us peel off or pass. He turned back to me with a sigh and brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. “Vicky, in case it hasn’t dawned on you yet, I haven’t had time to think, much less explain. The truth is—well, the truth is I miscalculated. I didn’t expect the word would spread so quickly. All I’m trying to do at the moment is keep one step ahead of people like Bernardo.”

“Okay,” I said, recognizing the tone. “But I would appreciate hearing any ideas that may be floating around in your pretty head.”

John gave me a sour look, and then an equally sour laugh. “Our hoped-for destination is London. It is now imperative that I start working my contacts. I daren’t do it on anything but a secure line, and the only line I’m sure of is the one in my office.”

No new wardrobe, then. I kept clothes and other necessities in John’s London flat. “Makes sense. So what was the point of meeting Monsignor Anonymous?”

“He’s in charge of relics and other human remains, including mummies, at the Vatican museums. I wanted to know if they had suffered any losses recently.”

“Very ingenious,” I said. “Had they?”

John shook his head morosely. “It was a far-out theory, but I rather hoped it was accurate. An insane collector, who could be counted on to keep mum, would give us some breathing room.”