The Looters (16 page)

“I know about the seal. It’s mentioned in the auction catalog and in the provenance documents,” I said. “But having a seal is to be expected. How do you connect it up to the museum? You need a picture and description in a museum catalog. Your picture doesn’t show the bottom where the seal is imprinted.”

He suddenly grinned triumphantly. “There is one document the thieves did not know about.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“In 1958, after my father was murdered for protecting the Sammu-ramat, King Faisal sent a commendation to the village, praising my father as a hero of Iraq. Faisal was overthrown later in July of that year. The commendation contains a drawing of the piece and the cylinder imprint.”

Shit.

“The commendation hangs in my father’s house that now belongs to my sister, who lives in it. I have asked her to send it to me.”

“When do you expect to receive it?”

“My daughter has tracked the package delivery on the global express Web site. I should get the commendation tomorrow.”

I let everything he said sink into my brain. I felt cold and vulnerable. The look on my face must have exposed my agony.

He said softly, “I’m sorry I have caused you trouble. You are not the one who stole it.”

“No, but I’m going to be the one who pays for it in blood.”

“Your life is at risk?”

“No, I meant—I don’t mean that kind of blood. It’s just that we never suspected it was stolen. I’ll lose my job.”

I was losing more than that. My career would be history.

“I’m sorry if the Semiramis has caused you grief. It took my father’s life. It cost my job, too. Like you I was a museum curator. Now,” shrugging his shoulders, “I drive a taxi in a city I hardly know. It truly carries a curse with it. But it’s also a national treasure of my country. If you were in my place wouldn’t you do the same?”

I didn’t answer.

I suppose I would protect our cultural treasures just as much as he wanted to protect his. But I wasn’t in his position. I was on the other end. Right now I was thinking more about how to save my career from spiraling downward.

The smell of spices in the room was making me nauseous. I had to get some fresh air.

“Would you, uh, give me a call, so I can see the commendation when it comes in?”

He nodded. “Yes, but after I get it, I must also call the policeman who was here, an FBI agent.”

Wonderful. We could have a party in the apartment and Special Agent Nunes could bring handcuffs.

I left in a hurry.

As I came out the front door, a woman was coming up the steps. She stared at me with surprise and looked toward the window of the apartment five stories up.

“You’ve seen my father.”

It wasn’t a question but a concerned statement.

“Your father…” I took a deep breath. “Perhaps your father should consider a reward for—”

She recoiled down a step. I might as well have slapped her.

“My grandfather died to save the Semiramis. It almost cost my father his own life. We don’t want your money.”

“I’m sorry.” Horribly embarrassed, I rushed by her and hurried down the street.

I had just offered her a bribe to shut him up. I felt dirty and ashamed. I lived in a penthouse that cost me more money for the building maintenance fee every month than the rent they paid here in a year. And Abdullah’s daughter, who probably waited on tables or clerked in a store, had showed more integrity than me. I guess money wasn’t the answer to everything.

I wanted to get away from the smells of the neighborhood as quickly as I could. And from the humiliation of being less honest and dedicated than these courageous people who gave everything—money, comfortable lives, and real blood—to protect a principle.

Abdullah’s question roiled in my head.

Would I be that dedicated to my country?

I wanted to think so, but I wasn’t sure.

Chapter 21

When I got back to the office, I tried Neal’s private number again. This time he answered. I told him about the interview with Nunes and what the Iraqi curator said. Neal’s reaction to the commendation Abdullah was expecting from Iraq was the same as mine.

“Sonofabitch.”

“Neal, I’m worried.”

“I told you not to worry.”

“It’s time to worry. Nunes has implied that since so many of my pieces came from Lipton—through your recommendation, I might add—and Viktor Milan, it’s some sort of conspiracy.”

“I’m nothing but a middleman. It’s not up to me to establish the provenance. If you hadn’t been negligent, neither one of us would be in this jam.”

Whoa.
The rat was abandoning the ship. I kept my cool and tried not to panic. “I need to talk to Milan.”

“I don’t know how to reach him. I told you, I know nothing about the guy. Lipton hasn’t returned my calls.”

“Lipton won’t answer my calls, either.”

“He could be out of town. He travels constantly—”

“He doesn’t check phone messages at his office? He doesn’t know the sky is falling? He’s avoiding me. And you. If I don’t get a response from him soon, I’m going to encourage that FBI agent who’s breathing down my neck to have Lipton investigated. You know, Nunes asked a good question. How did a number of fine museum pieces suddenly come on the market with great provenances after the Iraqi museum was looted?”

As I asked the question, I realized how suspicious it sounded. And that I would never be able to say with a straight face that I haven’t looked the other way when buying antiques. Everyone in the business knew better than to examine provenances too carefully.

“Maddy, I can’t talk now. I don’t know why I answered the phone. I have a meeting starting. Let’s get together later.”

We set a time to meet at his office. I wanted to ask him the name of the lawyer he mentioned previously, but he hung up before I could.

I pulled out the document report and went over it again, thinking about the characters involved. Sir Henri Lipton was big-time, the most prestigious dealer in the world of Mediterranean antiquities. He was a gay Englishman with a cute young boyfriend. The boyfriend was nice, but I found Lipton an insufferable snob and intellectual bully.

Before my father passed away a couple of years ago, he gave me a golden piece of advice when I told him about an antiquities dealer who tried to screw me and how I planned to tell him off: “Antiquities are a cottage industry. Get out of the business if you plan to make enemies.”

He was right. The antiquities business was a small world with a finite number of people involved. If I started alienating everyone who offended me, I might as well get another career, because I would soon be out of this one.

So I smiled and tolerated Sir Henri and sent him cases of Louis Roederer Champagne when I would’ve rather kicked him in the tush. And I hadn’t found him any more unscrupulous than the rest of the people in this cutthroat business driven by ego and greed. It might be that he was relying on Milan, the man of mystery.

For sure, Lipton had sold me several pieces that I was surprised had come on the market. Why had he offered them to me?

I assumed at the time that I had an inside track because Neal handled the sales and I was so good at faking my orgasms with him. I was now beginning to wonder if my attraction might not have been that I was an eager new curator full of unrealized ambitions… a combination that old-timers in the trade would read as someone who would buy first and ask questions afterward.

Dammit, it was true, but that was the nature of the trade. There were only a small number of good pieces. You had to—

I shook off trying to alibi. Neal was right. I had to keep myself in a good mind frame. If I started thinking I was guilty, I would signal it to others.

I did an Internet search on Viktor Milan. His Web site said that he specialized in antiquities… that was it. Not whether he bought or sold or appraised them. Nothing about eastern Mediterranean and Middle East antiquities or pieces from China, Angkor Wat, or other Far East venues… just antiquities.

The guy’s a real storehouse of information.

Besides the vagueness about what role he played in the antiquities market, he offered an address in Zurich, Switzerland… and no phone or fax number. That made it a bit hard to contact him.

I knew he prepared provenances; he put the documentation together for the Semiramis and other pieces. But there was no mention of it. Nor was there any offer to buy, sell, or trade anything.

The most interesting thing about the Web site was its lack of information.

My intercom buzzed. Eric’s voice was brisk and businesslike: “See me in my office.”

He looked grim when I walked in.

“Hiram is very upset.”

“I don’t blame him. I’m not exactly cheerful myself.”

“He says you got us into a fine mess. It means we’ll be under a microscope. The authorities will be looking over everything we ever bought.”

“Wait a minute. I went over every piece with both of you before making the buys. Why is it all my fault?”

“I relied upon you to verify the provenances.”

My blood boiled. I know I must have turned several shades of purple, because I could see all the blame being thrown my way.

He lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. “It comes down to this. Hiram made some phone calls to his political connections and got a picture of what we can expect. The U.S. Attorney has political ambitions. He’d like nothing better than to get an indictment and bring out evidence of U.S. troop involvement in the looting of the antiquities in Iraq. It would give him enormous publicity.”

Another nail in my coffin.
First there’s an FBI agent with a mentality of a robotic pit bull. Now it’s a U.S. Attorney who wants to run for president or something by trampling my life.

“Naturally, the museum can’t be faulted if one of its employees fails to properly authenticate the origins of the item. It relies upon the honesty of its employees.”

“What? Excuse me—what do you mean by ‘honesty’? We’re talking about whether a mistake was made. How did my integrity suddenly get questioned?”

“Hiram has been told that there’ll be an investigation by the FBI of every Mesopotamian piece that we’ve acquired since the Iraqi museum was looted. Those are our finest… and most expensive pieces. Purchased by you.”

“With the encouragement of you and Hiram.”

“The FBI is focusing on the fact that your purchases all involved two foreigners, one in London and the other in Switzerland.”

“What bullshit. Since when is Sir Henri Lipton considered a foreign enemy? He’s the biggest antiquities dealer in the world. You bought museum pieces through him before I even came on board. So have half the other museums in the country.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to put you on a leave of absence. As of now.”

It took a moment to get my voice. I spoke calmly because I was hurt. “I see. The museum plans on abandoning me. After all I’ve done for it.”

“Piedmont’s orders. My hands are tied. I’m sorry.”

He got up and walked out.

He left me sitting in his office. I heard him whisper to Nurse Ratched to get my electronic card key before I left. Naturally, the electronic code would be changed. I wouldn’t be allowed to remove anything except for some personal items.

I returned to my office. My whole world was unraveling. I picked up my few personal things and left after dropping my card key on Nurse Ratched’s desk. She smirked, but I didn’t say a word to her.

UNESCO [U
NITED
N
ATIONS
E
DUCATIONAL
, S
CIENTIFIC AND
C
ULTURAL
O
RGANIZATION
] I
NTERNATIONAL
C
ODE OF
E
THICS FOR
D
EALERS IN
C
ULTURAL
P
ROPERTIES

ARTICLE 1 Professional traders in cultural property will not import, export or transfer the ownership of this property when they have reasonable cause to believe it has been stolen, illegally alienated, clandestinely excavated or illegally exported.

The effect of the phrase “reasonable cause to believe”…
is to be read as requiring traders to investigate the provenance of the material they handle
.

It is not sufficient to trade in material without questions and consider that the clause only comes into effect when somehow evidence of the illegality is fortuitously acquired.

—UNESCO Web site

Chapter 22

I woke up in the middle of the night with my head feeling as if it were encased in a cobweb. Not a buzz on from booze, recreational drugs, or even a pleasure-producing prescription pill. I didn’t know how to describe it. It just wasn’t a pleasant feeling—as if my brain was dehydrated.

I had taken two over-the-counter sleeping aids that were in my medicine cabinet for eons, along with two glasses of wine. The combination put me into a deep sleep for about four hours, but my head was clogged and fuzzy when I woke up.

The word “roadkill” kept popping into my head, as if my life had been stretched out on the Cross Bronx Expressway at commute time. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next opportunity assignment was giving blow jobs to prison guards for extra privileges. The thought scared the hell out of me. I imagined being in a prison cell, smelling smoke, seeing fire. I tend to be claustrophobic anyway. I started shaking in bed and couldn’t keep the tears from coming. Finally, I got my nerves calmed and lay awake thinking.

Waking up during the night wasn’t unusual for me. I did some of my best thinking lying awake in bed at three or four in the morning. For some reason, it was at these times that answers to questions came to me and my revelations about mistakes and omissions occurred.

Tonight the only clarity was that life had me on the run and the focus of my energies had to be to keep myself out of jail.

In terms of continuing to live in my current lifestyle… well, the penthouse and the Jaguar in the underground garage were going to be part of my past history. I did enjoy having my very own private parking spot—in Manhattan that was as rare as having a private swimming pool. I knew I would never be able to keep the penthouse and the car without the salary that Hiram paid me. And my black American Express card…