The only thing I could think to do was to keep on going, hope I wasn't caught with it, and get to Lake's place, where surely between the two of us, we could work something out.
With the European Union, border crossings in Europe are rather more perfunctory than they used to be, with most people simply being waved through. Holders of foreign passports are treated somewhat more stringently and are occasionally pulled over and their vehicles searched, but relatively rarely. I thought the chances of making it through were reasonably good. I considered trying to hide the hydria under the floor of the trunk or the passenger seat, but if caught like that, I'd look guilty. It was too large to put in my suitcase, but I put my luggage back in the trunk, along with the lunch and the water to provide cover. Then, in a state of high anxiety, I started for the frontier.
I always think when I have to clear customs and immigration anywhere, that the line I'm in is inevitably the slowest, with either the surliest or the most suspicious agent, and there was no doubt this was the case on this occasion. As my car inched forward, and several cars ahead of me were pulled over, I got more and more frightened. I thought of changing lanes but decided this might call attention to myself. I started making up stories about how the wretched thing had managed to get itself into my trunk. Would my name now be in police computers, given that I'd called for help when I found Godard's body? Worse yet, would they somehow know this hydria had belonged to Go-dard and think I'd stolen it or, heaven forbid, that I'd pushed him into the basement when he'd interrupted me during the robbery?
My hands were shaking as I handed over my passport, and I suppose noticing this, the guard ordered me to pull over to one side. A rather severe-looking woman came out of the building and demanded I open the trunk. I pushed the button in the glove compartment, and then stood beside her, trying to look as if I hadn't a care in the world as she peered into the car. Miraculously, after a few seconds, and a couple of prods at my suitcase, and even a tug at the blanket, she slammed down the trunk lid and waved me on my way. Perhaps she thought anyone with sufficiently poor taste to have a blanket that color could not possibly recognize anything worth smuggling. A mile or two down the highway, I pulled over and threw up on the side of the road.
I was still feeling absolutely ghastly by the time I reached Volterra, the town close to where Lake had his villa. Lake had told me to check into another inn, lovely, I'm sure, not that I was in any frame of mind to appreciate it, and, as usual, expensive. It had taken me all day and well into the evening to get there, but despite my fatigue, as soon as I got to the room, I unpacked the chimera hydria, removed the lampshade to give me more light, and had a good, close look.
It was absolutely beautiful, even more so than I'd thought when I'd seen it in the gloom of Godard's chateau. The scene, Bellerophon killing the chimera, was painted with real elan, embellished with swirls around the neck and base. I loved the feel of it, the smooth surface, so perfectly burnished, the weight and the balance, things most of us don't get to enjoy, given our only opportunity to experience such antiquities is behind glass in a museum. The hydria was in perfect condition, without so much as a crack, let alone a repair, so good, in fact, that I wondered if it were a fake. I was disabused of this notion, however, after I placed a call to the shop.
"Hi Lara," Clive said. "Enjoying your little holiday?"
"It's lovely, Clive," I said. "Would you happen to have the Interpol CD handy?"
"It's here somewhere," he said. "Why?"
"There's something I want to check," I said, "so do me a favor and load it up, will you?"
"Okay," he said a minute or two later. "What am I looking for?"
"A hydria," I said. "Etruscan. Depicting Bellerophon and the chimera."
"Who or what is a Bellerophon?" he said.
"Hero on winged Pegasus who killed the chimera, which is . . ."
"I know," he said. "That thing with way too many heads."
It took several minutes of combing through the list of stolen antiquities before Clive said, "Give me a little more of a description of the hydria, Lara."
I did. "I think it's here," he said. "That was a pretty detailed description you just gave me. It's supposed to be painted by some guy called Micali—actually I think Micali is the name of the person who identified him, not the painter him- or herself—or one of this guy Micali's followers. Done around 500 B.C. You wouldn't by any chance have this thing in your possession, would you?"
"No, Clive," I said. "A vision of it came to me in a dream."
"I can never tell when you're being facetious, Lara," he said. "But if you do have it, it's stolen, from a museum in the archaeological zone of Vulci, wherever that is."
"Mmm," I said. This situation just kept getting worse.
"If you do have it," he said, "you'd better call the French authorities."
"Italian," I said.
"I thought you were in Paris," he said.
"I was," I replied. "Now I'm in Italy."
"Well, wherever you are, you'd better turn it in. According to the UNESCO resolutions on the subject, if you acquired this chimera thing in good faith, you're entitled to compensation for it. You did acquire it in good faith, did you not? You didn't say, steal it, or anything, did you?"
"No, I did not steal it, Clive." I sighed. "Thanks so much for that vote of confidence."
"Sorry," he said. "I just worry about you sometimes, Lara. Rob called, by the way. He says to tell you to stay out of trouble."
Right. Leaving aside the fact that it was way too late for that, what would have been wrong with "Tell Lara I love her," or "Tell her I miss her terribly every minute she's away"?
"He also said to tell you he misses you," Clive said. "I suppose I should have mentioned that first."
"Good-bye, Clive," I said. "If Rob calls again, tell him I miss him, too."
It was at this point that I hatched what I thought of as Plan A. I would get the hydria to Lake. He would then have one of his minions call a news conference on his behalf, or whatever it was he'd been planning to do with the bronze horse, and announce with a flourish that he'd managed to track down an Etruscan antiquity, probably by the Micali painter or one of his followers, that he believed to have been stolen. There'd be a nice speech about returning it to the museum where it belonged, where all could enjoy it and appreciate the rich heritage of the Etruscans and so on.
The plan wasn't perfect. There'd be questions about where he found it, and I needed to come out of this with a clean reputation and a nice commission, even if I hadn't paid anything for the hydria, and we'd both have to count on the fact that no one would recognize it as the hydria in Godard's place. I might be able to say that I bought it from Godard, at Lake's request.
Now that Godard was dead, who was going to argue with me? With a bit more refinement, I hoped Plan A would work. It had to. There was no Plan B.
I put the carton with its precious contents back in the trunk of the car to keep it out of sight of the prying eyes and possibly clumsy hands of the housekeeping staff and settled in to wait for Lake to contact me.
I didn't hear from him that first evening. I tried calling the number he'd originally given me, Antonio's cell phone, but there was no answer. I left a voice mail message to say I'd arrived. The next morning, I sat in the lounge of the inn drinking tea with lemon and slowly eating toast, hoping my stomach would settle down, waiting for Antonio to show up. After a couple of hours of this, I couldn't sit still anymore and headed out.
Volterra is a really spectacular place, a medieval town set high up, maybe 1,800 feet on high cliffs, the baize as they're called, over two huge valleys, with views in every direction. It's about thirty miles from the sea, which you can occasionally see, and it can be a pretty wild and windy place. It has narrow cobblestone streets that have a claustrophobic feel to them as the buildings on either side hang over the street. It has gorgeous public buildings, the Duomo and several churches, and here and there you can find reminders of a much earlier Volterra, the Velathri of the Etruscans and the Volterrae of the Romans.