“Nearly two centuries pass. Rome falls; Byzantium rises as the second Rome. Byzantium is now Christian too, of course, but a different sort of Christian from the Armenians. I won’t bother you with the theological details. Zeno becomes emperor of Byzantium. He is interested in reuniting the churches.
“At this time the body of Gregory is discovered by some shepherds, in a cave. Preserved, you see. Another miracle. The word spreads to Byzantium. The emperor naturally wishes to do something grand for the Armenian church. So he sends craftsmen, gold, and jewels to holy Ejmiatzin. They take the original mask, and they make it into the centerpiece of a great reliquary triptych. Solid gold, chased with silver, decorated with a thousand pearls and a thousand jewels, including the famous sapphires known as the Eyes of Cappadocia, offered from the Byzantine crown jewels by the devout empress Ariadne. These were placed in the eye sockets of the mask, over the actual eyes taken from the body of the saint. Thus was made what we call the Suurp Timag. The Holy Mask.”
“What happened to it?” asked Marlene.
“For centuries it rested in the Holy City, in the great cathedral. It was brought out on the saint’s day only, at which time, of course, it performed miracles. The Bagratid king Gagik brought it to his capital at Ani around the year 1000, and built a church to contain it, the church of St. Gregory.
“Ani fell to the Seljuk Turks in 1064. By that time many Armenian nobles had exchanged their lands for estates in southeastern Anatolia. There they founded the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, with its capital at Sis. The ecclesiastical treasures, including the Holy Mask, were removed to the see of the Cicilian Catholicos at Hromkla.
“In 1292, Hromkla fell to the Mamluks, and the church treasures were looted. The Holy Mask disappears from history. All assume it was taken with the other treasures by the Mamluks. But there is a curious note in the manuscript of Sir John Maundeville’s Travels into Great Armenia, written in the middle of the fourteenth century. He describes a miraculous relic to be found in a castle near the port of Lajazzo on the Gulf of Alexandretta, what he called ‘a head of St. Gregory, of gold and jewels, that weepeth real tears from its eyes.’ The Mamluks took Lajazzo in 1345, but no such object was found.”
He fell silent. The sun dipped behind the cliffs across the Hudson. Marlene said, “So?”
“So, let us discuss my dealings with Mehmet Ersoy. He had a brother, Altemur Ersoy, who is an archaeologist. I see you know this. I began to buy pieces from Ersoy through Sokoloff. I am quite pleased. I am certain the pieces are stolen from Turkey, but who cares? They stole from us.
“Then Ersoy calls me, I believe just before Christmas of last year. He says his brother has made a great discovery in the excavation of a medieval castle in the neighborhood of Payas. On the Gulf of Alexandretta. Payas is Lajazzo. When Ersoy told me that the mask still existed, I did not, of course, believe him. He provides a photograph. I pretend indifference, of course, but my heart is in my throat. I say I would consider buying it if it is genuine, but, of course, I know it must be genuine. No one could forge such a thing.”
“Why not?” Marlene asked.
“The investment! That is, if one could even lay hands on large cabachon and square-cut stones of such quality and in such quantity, not to mention the gold itself. Twenty-five pounds of gold, more or less? If the raw materials of the thing he showed me in the photograph were genuine, their intrinsic value alone would be in the neighborhood of eight to ten million. And they would have to be genuine because, of course, it is the easiest thing in the world to expose fake jewels or precious metals. No, it was real. We agreed on a price-”
“How much?” Karp asked.
“Thirty million dollars. A million on account and the rest on delivery. Of course, raising that much cash is not a trivial task even for Armenians. I had to send representatives to Armenian communities across the country, to Chicago, to California-”
Marlene asked, “That was where Gabrielle Avanian was going, wasn’t it? She was working on this.”
Kerbussyan placed his hand on his cheek and shook his head. “Ayt kheglj poriguh!” he said.
“Pardon?” said Marlene.
“I’m sorry. I slip into the old tongue from sorrow. That poor child, I said. Yes, she was to go to San Francisco and Fresno. Torn to pieces by beasts …” He was quiet for a moment, swallowing, his face working. Then, his composure regained, he continued, “Of course, by that time Ersoy had been assassinated. We assembled the money and waited, but no one has contacted us.”
Karp said, “You’re sure the mask is in New York?”
“Fairly certain. Ersoy hinted as much.”
“What about the other stuff? Did any of Ersoy’s things turn out to be fake?”
Kerbussyan smiled faintly. “Of course. He and his brother were in it together. They were running an international ring selling fake antiquities. We knew that. I paid for fakes gladly, once I was sure that he had the Holy Mask.”
“But why did you think he was going to be such a sweetheart about the mask? Didn’t you suspect a trick there too?”
“Naturally. Thirty million in cash is a tempting prize. But I had taken precautions.”
“Including murder?”
Kerbussyan rocked his head slowly from side to side. “No, Mr. Karp. I confess that I might easily have killed Ersoy if I thought his death would bring me the Holy Mask. But I would never have killed the only man who knew where it was.”
“How do we know you haven’t got it now?”
For the first time a flush of angry color touched Kerbussyan’s cheek, and his voice grew loud. “How? How? Do you think I sought the Suurt Timag to stick it in a hole as it has been hidden for six hundred years? If I had it, Armenia would know. The whole world would know. I would shout it from the rooftops. Hide the glory of Armenia to cover up the murder of a Turk? Me?”
Marlene spoke up in a mollifying tone. “No, I don’t think you would, Mr. Kerbussyan. The thing is, we’re still back to the old question. Who killed Ersoy and why?”
Kerbussyan looked genuinely puzzled, and this time Karp knew he was telling the truth when he answered, “I honestly can’t help you there. I believe you are correct when you say that whoever killed him probably has the Holy Mask. It may be that Ersoy had accomplices and that these betrayed him, or he tried to betray them and they found out. Thirty million, as I say…. Or someone found out about the negotiations and decided to intervene. My hope is that we will be contacted again by whoever has it now.”
“In which case,” Karp said sternly, “you’ll contact us.” A slight pause, and an affirmative nod of the head.
“Like hell he’ll call us,” said Karp when they were again in their car, driving south down the Henry Hudson. “He’s not going to do shit unless he’s got his hands on that statue. By the way, how did you figure all that out?”
“I don’t know. I just took a chance. When we knew it was all about art treasures, there was a good chance that the killing was about a particularly big one.”
Karp laughed, and then gave voice to his sole artistic talent, a remarkable gift for mimicry. “It’s the shtuff that dreams are made of,” he said as Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. And then, an explosive laugh, Sidney Greenstreet, “The black bird, Mr. Spade, ha-ha!”
“You’re not taking this very seriously,” said Marlene.
“Ha! It’s looney toons, that’s why. We’re in a goddamn movie. I expect guys in dirty white suits and fez-zes. Reeck! They are after me, Reeck!”
“That’s from a different movie. Rick is in Casablanca. Good Peter Lorre, though.” This triggered a memory. “Oh, speaking of guys in fezzes, I talked to Guma before we left. He wants you to call him. Some weird complicated thing about some sleazeballs he’s got on a wiretap. I couldn’t make it out.”