‘You see that guy in the car?’ I asked Louis.
‘Yeah, the one with the mask. Didn’t get a good look at him, but I’d guess that he’s ailing for something.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes, was there someone else in the passenger seat beside him?’
Louis appeared puzzled. ‘No, it was just him. Why?’
‘Nothing, it must have been the sunlight on his window. No sign of Jimmy Jewel. I’ll try again later. Let’s go…’
Herod drove to Waldoboro, because that was where his contact lived, the old woman who ran the antique store. He ordered coffee and a sandwich in a diner, and made a call from a pay phone while he waited for his food to arrive. Only a handful of other customers were present, none of them nearby, so he had no fear of being overheard.
‘Where do we stand?’ he said when the call was answered.
‘He lives above a warehouse in Lewiston. An old bakery.’
Herod listened as the location was described to him in detail.
‘Does he keep company with his kind?’ he asked.
‘Some.’
‘And the items?’
‘It appears that some interested parties have already emerged, but they remain in his possession.’
Herod grimaced. ‘How did the other parties come to hear of them?’
‘He is a careless man. Word has spread.’
‘I am on my way. Make contact with him. Tell him I’d like to talk.’
‘I’ll tell Mr. Rojas that I may have a buyer, and that he should take no further action until we meet. As you know, he is not unaware of the value of the objects. It could be an expensive business.’
‘I’m sure that I can convince the seller to be reasonable, especially since I have no interest in what he is selling, merely in the source.’
‘Nevertheless, he is not a reasonable man.’
‘Really?’ said Herod. ‘How unfortunate.’
‘Neither is he unintelligent.’
‘Intelligent and unreasonable. One would have assumed such qualities were mutually contradictory.’
‘I have a photograph of him, if that might help. I printed it from the surveillance camera in my store.’ Herod described his car, and where it was parked. He told the woman that it was unlocked, and she should leave whatever material she had under the passenger seat. It was better, he felt, if they did not meet. The woman did her best not to sound disappointed at the news.
He hung up. His food had arrived. He ate it slowly, and in a corner far from the other customers. He knew that his appearance had a way of putting people off their food, but equally he found eating under such scrutiny to be unpleasant. Eating was hard enough for him as it was: his appetite was minimal at best, but he had to consume to keep his strength up. That was more important now than ever before. As he ate, he thought about the man at the window of the bar, and the Captain’s reaction to his presence.
There was a mirror on the wall opposite his booth. It reflected the road, where a little girl in a torn blue dress, her back to the diner, held a red balloon and watched the cars and trucks going by. A big Mack rig was heading her way, but she did not move, and the driver, high in his cab, did not appear to see her. Herod turned from the mirror as the truck hit the girl, driving straight over her. Herod almost cried out, and when the truck had passed the girl was gone. There was no sign that she had ever been there.
Slowly, Herod looked back at the mirror, and the girl was where she had always been, except now she was facing the diner, and Herod. She seemed to smile at him, even as the dark hollows of her eyes mocked the light. Gradually she faded from sight and, in the reflected world, her balloon floated up toward gray-black clouds streaked with purple and red, like wounds torn in the heavens. Then the sky cleared, and the mirror was merely a reflection of this dull world, not a window into another.
When Herod had eaten as much as he was able, he lingered over his coffee. After all, he had plenty of time. It would be some time before darkness fell, and Herod worked best in the dark. Then he would pay a visit to Mr. Rojas. Herod had no intention of waiting until the next day to begin negotiations. In fact, Herod had no intention of negotiating at all.
19
Far away, in an apartment on the Rue du Seine in Paris, just above the sales rooms of the esteemed ancient art dealers Rochman et Fils, a deal was about to be concluded. Emmanuel Rochman, the latest in a long line of Rochmans to make a very comfortable living from the sale of the rarest of antiquities, waited for the Iranian businessman seated across from him to cease prevaricating and announce the decision that they both knew he had already reached. After all, this face-to-face meeting in the presence of the ancient artifacts was but the final step in a lengthy negotiation that had begun many weeks before, and items as rare and beautiful as those currently before him were never likely to be offered to him again: two delicate ivories from the tombs of the Assyrian queens at Nimrud, and a pair of exquisite lapis lazuli cylindrical seals, 5,500 years old and therefore the oldest such items that Rochman had ever been able to offer for sale.
The Iranian sighed and shuffled on his seat. Rochman liked dealing with Iranians. The Iranians had been particularly keen pursuers of the stolen items from the Iraq museum that had so far made it on to the market, even if they, like the Jordanians, had ultimately been forced to relinquish most of the loot that had come their way. While many thousands of items remained missing, the most valuable of them had largely been recovered. Opportunities to acquire Iraqi treasures were growing increasingly rare, and the amount that collectors were willing to pay had increased accordingly. Although Rochman had not encountered this particular buyer before, he came strongly recommended by two former clients who had spent a great deal of money with Monsieur Rochman without troubling themselves unduly about matters of provenance and paperwork.
‘Will there be more?’ asked the Iranian. He called himself Mr. Abbas, ‘the Lion,’ which was clearly a pseudonym, but his goodwill deposit of two million dollars had cleared without a hitch, and those who vouched for him had assured Rochman that two million dollars barely represented a day’s earnings for Mr. Abbas. Nevertheless, Rochman was starting to grow weary of this particular lion hunt. Come, he thought, I know you’re going to buy them. Just say yes, and we can be done.
‘Not like these,’ said Rochman, then reconsidered. Who knew how much extra revenue a little patience might generate? ‘The ivories, or others even half as beautiful as them, are unlikely ever to resurface. If you decline, they will disappear. The seals-’ He tipped his right hand back and forth in the universal gesture of possibility, erring on the side of the negative. ‘But if you are satisfied with this particular purchase, artifacts of a similar quality may be made available to you.’
‘And provenance?’
‘The House of Rochman stands behind everything that it sells,’ said Rochman. ‘Naturally, were any legal issues to materialize, the buyer would be the first to know, but I am confident that no such difficulties will arise in this particular instance.’
It was a standard line on the rare occasions when Rochman truly breached the boundaries of legality. Oh, there were often gray areas when it came to ancient treasures, but this was not one of them. Both he and Abbas knew the source of the ivories and the seals. It did not need to be spoken aloud, and no receipts would accompany this particular sale.
Abbas nodded in apparent contentment. ‘Well, I am satisfied,’ he said. ‘Let us proceed.’