We made our way quick-file through the cases of Tanagra statuettes and Chinese gilt-work. I looked at least briefly into every display I passed, not that I expected to see anything useful—even the craziest, most suicidal angel in Heaven would think twice about hiding a demon’s horn in plain sight in a public museum, and Anaita had lasted a long time as a major player in a place that, at least for subtlety, made the Forbidden City look like Sesame Street.
“We’re almost there, Duster,” I whispered into the walkie-talkie as we reached the Western Asia section. “Do you copy? Where are the guards?”
“Not sure right now,” came back the answer. “But I don’t see any movement in your wing. Cash, you are good to go.”
Now, I’m not totally a museum guy in the first place, and we were there in the middle of the night with malicious intent (not to mention in semi-darkness) and under clear threat from angry angels, but I still have to say the stuff in the Persian section was beautiful. Most of the exhibits dated from the heyday of their empire, about twenty-five centuries earlier—imperial drinking horns shaped like bulls, gorgeous carpets with repeating patterns of silver and gold sketched in silk thread, like John Coltrane blowing in full mathematical freefall, so intricate and charming that I wanted to stop and look at all of them. Not that we had the time—which was a big part of the problem. Now I was getting worried all over again.
What if the horn was here, but instead of stashing it in an office safe, Anaita really had stashed it in plain sight? There were hundreds and hundreds of exhibits just in this wing created by her donations, and at least half of them could have hidden something that size. Even if I limited my search to things that looked like horns, there were so many—animal horns, demon horns, drinking horns, hunting horns!
Worse, what if Anaita had stuck it downstairs in the back of the Iroquois Long House in the North American section, or in the pocket of a Boston whaling captain’s jacket? I wished I could have brought Edie Parmenter along to help locate it, but endangering armed Amazons was bad enough without dragging in school children. No, our only real hope of coming away with anything useful was to find out whether there really was a hidden safe or stronghold and then get into it. So that was what we were going to do. It was only a matter of time until one of the security people did something unexpected, or one of the curators in the other wing suddenly remembered she needed a stapler that she’d left next to the Thai baskets. Or maybe the Angel of Moisture herself liked to pop in at night and look around at what her money had wrought. Wouldn’t that just be perfect?
Which is when I noticed something very like Anaita standing right in front of me.
I will confess that even though I knew almost instantly it was only a mosaic made of glass and semi-precious stones, it still gave me a thump to the heart that I could taste in my mouth.
The panel on which it hung (because the mosaic was set in what looked like a delicate plaster matrix, protected by a sheet of glass or heavy plastic) stood against one of the side walls, near the end of the Persian part of the Western Asia collection. The goddess was winged and crowned, flanked by two fierce lions. The card said the mosaic was third century, from the palace of Bishapur. It didn’t say it was Anaita, but I recognized my enemy instantly. The smile on her mosaic face was a bit disturbing, though: she had the serene look of someone who was three or four steps ahead of anyone who might be thinking about trying to take her down. Anyone like me, for instance.
Clarence, Halyna, and Oxana were creeping quietly through the exhibit hall, testing walls with a stud finder, looking for anything hidden. There were a few doors and a couple of small corridors that led to the public restrooms and the fire control equipment, and even a small curator’s office. I carded the door to the office and went in, but though I checked every wall for hiding places or secondary doors, I couldn’t find anything suspicious, and a search of the desk and cubbyholes didn’t turn up anything, either.
As I got back out to the main floor, something clicked in my earbud.
“Cash, this is Duster. Copy?”
“Got you, Duster.”
“Something . . . weird is going on.” Wendell sounded calm, but there was an edge I didn’t like. It was the vibration of somebody trying to hold it together when things were threatening to come apart. “There’s a guard above you. Do you copy? I think it’s a guard. In the Oceania exhibit.”
“Shit.” We had developed contingencies for this, so it could have been worse. “He’s a little early, but we can hide in the—”
“No. Listen. He’s down.”
“What? Try that again, Duster. Did you say ‘down’? What do you mean?”
“He’s lying on the floor. I’m looking at him, and I can only see the bottom half of him, but he’s lying on the floor near the stairwell where you came in. Did you do it?”
“What, club a guard? Hell no. Are you sure it’s not just a shadow or something?”
“Cash, he is down and I think I see blood. A big puddle, getting bigger. Time to abort.”
“Shit. Copy.” I thumbed off the walkie-talkie and hurried to find Clarence and Oxana, who were down at the far end. I signaled for Halyna to come with me, but when I looked back she was still staring at the mosaic of Anaita. I knew she hated the immortal bitch, but this was a really bad time to be dwelling on it. I hurried back to get her.
“We’ve got a problem,” I whispered. “We have to get out of here.”
“Something is wrong with that picture,” Halyna said as if I hadn’t spoken. She took off her infrared goggles, stared at the eight-foot tall mosaic, then put them back on again. “There is a big cold place in the middle of it.”
“We don’t have time right now,” I said. “We have to get to an exit. We may have to make an exit.”
Halyna stepped forward, still not paying any attention to me, and began sliding her fingers up and down the slab, reaching up as high as she could, then down to floor level. She moved to the other side and did the same thing. She must have touched something hidden, because suddenly Anaita took wing.
Well, at least that’s what it looked like when the goddess Anaita and her big kitty-cat companions rose into the air. They kept on until they’d risen six or seven feet straight up the high wall, revealing a door that had been hiding behind the mosaic slab. It had a card reader, but I was pretty certain that the poor slob of a curator whose information we’d stolen didn’t know anything about this particular door and had no privileges for it. I slid the card in the slot several times, but I was right: no good.
Clarence and Oxana rejoined us.
“What’s going on?” Clarence asked.
“Emergencies and craziness all over the fucking place,” I said in a low voice. “Wendell says there’s a guard down on the floor above us, and he thinks he can see blood. But look what Halyna just found.”
“Is that . . . ?”
“It was behind that mosaic. What do you think? As for me, I think we’ve got about zero time left, but we’re here, and I can’t just walk away. How do we get this door open?” I got on the walkie to Wendell and told him what we’d found. “Any more information on that guard?”
“Nothing. He’s still not moving. I’ve got a real bad feeling, Cash.”
“So do I, Duster, but I’m making a command decision. Whatever happened to the guard, no one else has noticed yet. Are you still looping the security cam footage?”
“Yes, but maybe that’s why he showed up. People notice eventually . . .”