by A G Stevens
“She was incredibly insistent that she be made aware of the valuation of Parrick’s collection. And not out of concern for Parrick himself. More out of self-interest.”
“Does that seem out of line?”
Blaze thought about the rest of his conversation with her. “Considering what she told me about the nature of their marriage, yes. They don’t seem properly connected for a couple. It appears that they have their own agendas.”
Zed dropped his spoon. It clattered in Blaze’s earpiece. “Wait...a woman you’ve just met told you intimate details about her marriage, during a party where her husband was in attendance?”
Blaze made another stroke, this time along his jaw. “She did.”
“And not just any woman, but Helene Caron Parrick?”
Blaze laughed. “That’s the one.”
“Well, damn, Derek.” Zed tried not to sound too excited about this development or the implication it held, keeping his professional reserve as much as possible. He also tried not to say too much about it, knowing their conversation was being recorded by the House. But his message was being received loud and clear. “Damn, Derek. Am I right?”
Blaze thought about her overt flirtation, her lips surrounding her straw, her gaze throwing fire in his direction. “You are, yes.”
“E. C., my friend,” Zed said. “Extreme caution. Proceed with that.”
“Agreed,” Blaze confirmed. “A little less enticing knowing she’s absolutely brutal with Gabrielle, her assistant. Abusive, even. I spoke to Gabrielle about it.”
“You risked blowing your cover,” Zed reminded him.
“I was gathering intel,” Blaze corrected him.
“Allowed,” Zed said. “And?”
“She’s a bit...hardened to it, I’d say.”
“Necessary,” Zed said, “considering who she works for.”
“Yes indeed.” Blaze made a few more passes, and his jaw was smooth. He splashed water on his face and cleaned off the remaining shaving cream. “At any rate, there’s a fair amount of drama stirring around the island. And the gala is still hours away.”
Zed took in a mouthful of cereal, chewing as he spoke. “I hope it doesn’t get in the way of the mission.”
“It shouldn’t,” Blaze said as he dried his face, sprayed on cologne, and pulled on his shirt. “But I’ve worked my way through drama before. So if it encroaches, I’ll be ready.”
“Good,” Zed replied. “Because you’ll be walking into a room full of it tonight before you make the switch.”
“Yes. I will.”
Blaze’s words were affirmative, but his tone sent Zed more doubt. “That sounds indefinite. What are you planning here?” he asked.
Blaze ran putty through his hair, slid on his glasses, and put the rest of his Liam Keller look into place. “I’m still convinced I can make the switch during the assessment. In fact, I think it might be a safer option.”
“What?”
“No, really. I’ll have full access to all the pieces.”
Zed groaned. “With security staring over your shoulder the entire time, no doubt.”
“I think I can make it work.”
“Dude...”
“I’ve done trickier maneuvers in tighter quarters.”
“But dude—”
“It’s not as impossible as it seems.”
“DEREK,” Zed said loudly.
“I know,” Blaze assured him. “It’s not what the House wants.”
“It’s not what the House has tasked you to do,” Zed clarified.
Blaze took a last look in the mirror to make sure his cover was in place. “I’ll...do my best to follow their directive, then.”
Zed laughed. “That doesn’t sound the least bit convincing.”
Blaze smirked, something that could be heard in his response. “Doesn’t it?”
“Just be careful, whichever way you play it. No unnecessary risks.”
“Absolutely.”
“Of. Any. Kind.” Zed emphasized.
Blaze knew exactly what he was saying. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Zed took one more mouthful of cereal. “Make sure you do.”
Blaze signed off. He gathered the attaché and double-knocked the false bottom to make sure the replica of the Tlaloc mask was still firmly in place. Then he rapped on the door to alert the guards outside that he was ready for delivery to the treasure room.
Hanson opened the door to greet him, and Dawes showed him to the hallway and guided him back to the treasure room, beneath bright azure skies that called for dark sunglasses. The tropical morning was thick and sultry as they walked, and even with the stray breeze cooling things down, Blaze felt the pressure of his followers weighing on him. “I appreciate you escorting me to the premises,” Blaze said.
“Of course,” Dawes reassured him. “Mr. Parrick wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I’ll bet, Blaze thought, smiling and nodding.
Nicholas Parrick was waiting at the door of the treasure room, bright-eyed and cheerful. “Good morning, Liam. I trust you enjoyed yourself last night?”
Blaze smiled and took off his shades, squinting as he did. “It was quite a spectacle, yes. Thank you again for having me.”
“But of course! You’re a guest.”
The security guards flanking him made him feel like that wasn’t entirely true. “The fire dancers were incredible.”
Parrick laughed. “The way they swing those bolas without setting themselves aflame amazes me every time.” It was mid-morning small talk meant to ease them into the errand at hand, and it vaporized as quickly as it had arisen. “Shall we?” Parrick motioned them to the entrance. The door was closed, and Blaze took notice of the security system more closely this time: a palm scan, a retinal scan, and a voice recognition system that responded to Parrick’s vocal passphrase. The billionaire leaned close and enunciated clearly into the microphone. “Coconut.”
“Coconut?” Blaze said aloud absentmindedly.
Parrick laughed. “I like to keep the passcodes easy and memorable.”
“Isn’t that counter to the idea of security? And isn’t saying it out loud in front of everyone unadvised?”
Parrick’s humor fell a bit, as if felt he were being tested. “It’s a single-use pattern. And it’s already been changed.”
Blaze realized he’d challenged his mark. “Sorry. Industry habit. Security and insurance go hand in hand.”
Parrick’s smile returned. “Of course.”
The latch hummed and clicked, and the doors slid open with a hiss. “Right this way.” Parrick stepped forward, with Dawes and Hanson maintaining their stations on either side of Blaze.
The room was a much more subdued environment without its theatrics. Blaze could see all the mechanical reality of the displays without their costumes on, though the pieces themselves were no less magnificent for it. They were maybe even grander this way; in their stark cases under the cool, revealing gallery illumination, they were the stars of the show. “I had hoped we’d have them out of their cases and laid along a work table for you to make your examinations,” Parrick explained. “You’d have a much clearer view of their quality.”
Blaze had been expecting the same. His task of replacing the mask with the duplicate would now be exponentially more difficult. “Is there any chance we could still make that happen? It really is the best way for me to work...I may find flaws and features that wouldn’t be detectable from under glass.”
Parrick was remorseful, if not flexible. “I would love to accommodate. But unfortunately, it won’t give us enough time for restaging for the gala tonight. You’ll have to view them through their glass. I hope that’s okay.” The drop in his voice told Blaze he was going to have to make it okay, even if it wasn’t.
Blaze was certain a more specific sort of insurance agent would have insisted on seeing the pieces with no barrier. As it was, he knew to be agreeable. And he wasn’t really there for the assessment anyway, so it was all the better that he’d h
ave any sort of access to the Tlaloc mask. “As long as I can be nose-to-nose with the cases, I should be fine.”
“Absolutely. Dawes will stay with you and make sure your every need is met.”
Blaze was a bit surprised to hear this. “You aren’t going to be here while it happens?”
“Sadly, there are some last minute arrangements I have to oversee,” Parrick informed him “Helene has given me a laundry list of approvals to make, and I’m afraid it’ll take into the afternoon, which will barely give me enough time to change into my gorilla suit and greet everyone for the cocktail reception and pre-party. I hope you understand.”
“Absolutely.” And so much the better, Blaze thought. It would be one less set of prying eyes to avoid while making the switch.
“I hope that despite the setbacks you’ll find your way to provide the most favorable valuations,” Parrick implored, “not just for Tlaloc, but for all the pieces now that the policy is changing hands. I don’t sleep well knowing my treasures are anything less than fully protected." His gaze became concentrated, focused. “Which means you might not sleep well, either.”
Blaze met Parrick’s gaze focus for focus, but Liam Keller dropped his eyes and relented. “Of course, Nick. Davenport-Frasier wants nothing but the utmost in security for their clients.”
Parrick’s laughter was thunderous and overly comforting. “Splendid. We’re seeing eye-to-eye then.”
Blaze understood perfectly now: the implication was that he should assess these items at their highest possible value without handling them or seeing them up close. A truly discerning eye might determine their value to be less than top-level—or worse, perhaps to find that some of them were counterfeit, or even openly stolen goods. It was true for the Tlaloc mask, he reasoned. Why wouldn’t it be true for the other pieces as well?
He pointed at the veiled case. “And the Thunderhead mask? I presume I’ll be able to see that before the unveiling? It is the central reason for the reassessment of the collection, after all.”
“Oh, of course,” Parrick assured him. “When you reach that space, let Dawson know, and he’ll have the veil removed. And please keep from touching the glass on any of the cased pieces, if you would; we need those to be pristine for the gala.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Parrick shook Blaze’s hand and slapped his shoulder. “Every bit a gentleman and a scholar,” he said happily as he and Hanson drifted back through the door and out of the treasure room. “Davenport-Frasier sent the right man for the job. And I intend to let them know how happy I am with their service.”
“I appreciate that.” Blaze smiled uncomfortably at Dawes as he wondered how he was going to replace the mask without being seen by his constant companion. “I hope you won’t be bothered if I speak aloud as I make my assessments,” Blaze asked. “It helps me gather details.”
Dawson shrugged. “Make all the noise you like, Mr. Keller. It won’t bother me a bit.”
Blaze smiled. “Excellent. Thank you.”
He laid his attaché open on a bench before the first display, clicked on the cufflink communicator, gathered a legal pad and a pencil, and began making his notes. “Parrick collection, Thane Island, exhibit piece 1A.” He read the display tag listing the name, features, and history. “Entitled: Stone Tablet of Itzqal, era estimated circa 800 A.D., Metzlan tribe.” His eyes traced the surface, uncertain of what elements should be called out in his notetaking. What does an art assessor actually assess in these situations? he wondered. And as an operative under contract with a shadow agency, shouldn’t I already know this? Dawes loomed heavy in the near-distance; Blaze assumed that after Parrick’s insistent instruction, and after Dawes’ own prior thinly-veiled warnings about interlopers on the island, he’d be watching for suspicious activity. He was astute, and as head of Parrick’s security detail, he wouldn’t be one to let a possible threat slip through for lack of scrutiny.
So then, assessor... Blaze thought. Assess.
It triggered something in him that had always been in place in his freelance missions: his ability to improvise. It had always served him, rising to the surface when he needed it most. And when all else failed, it prompted him to go with the obvious, which in this case, meant describing what he saw. He pulled a tape measure from his attaché, grateful that Savant and Zed had an inkling of what should happen in a situation like this. Then he measured its height and width through the glass. “Elongated rectangular...sandstone slab...twenty-six inches high...thirty-four inches wide...” He eyeballed the case from the side. “Approximately two inches thick. Distress along the anterior edge, presumably from original chiseling away from native source. Seven rows of glyphs embossed into the surface, linear in nature...several curved, potentially numeric or alphabetic. No drawn symbols aside from these.”
His eyes slid sideways to find Dawes speaking into his own communicator. “Yes,” Dawes said quietly, his own eyes glancing toward Blaze. He smiled and nodded.
Definitely keeping tabs on me, Blaze thought as he smiled and nodded back.
He returned to his work. “Trace residue of ochre-based paint filling a small sampling of the engraving. Advanced attrition on the lower right quadrant, broken corner in the lower left, half-inch in width. Extensive pitting and potential water erosion transverse along the surface...” He wrote as he spoke, then took a long pause to finalize the written notes. Then he moved to the next display. “Exhibit piece 2A, entitled Infinity’s Edge...”
Over the course of forty minutes he engaged like this, verbally listing the features of each piece as he wrote them down. The task was droning; it was a struggle for him to keep alert. This must be the most boring job in the world, Blaze thought. How do people do this for a living?
Dawes stationed himself at the corner of the room by the door, where Blaze’s every move could be witnessed, leaving him no obvious opportunity to slip toward the veiled case and make the switch. Adding to that the cameras aimed directly at the pieces, there was almost no section of the room that wasn’t covered by surveillance. Maybe Zed and Savant were right after all. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to make the switch during the assessment.
Or maybe it would require some slick trickery he hadn’t thought of yet.
He rounded the middle of the room for piece 15A, the obsidian blade that shone nearly white in the glare of the open light of the room now. “Entitled—”
“Tongue of Heaven.” He was interrupted by Helene Parrick’s voice as she entered the room and took a place beside Dawes. “Estimated circa 300 AD, from the Shbira tribe in Southern Caldaura. A blade of pure obsidian used in ritual human sacrifice, in which an acolyte’s abdominal cavity was emptied of its entrails while he was still alive. The cavity would then be filled with amber resin and wood chips, and a fire built inside to char the flesh. Then, each organ would be contained in a separate urn—pieces 15B, C, D, E and F—and buried with the charred husk.”
Blaze stood mesmerized by the gleam of the blade and the hypnotic song of Helene’s languid voice. “Gruesome,” he said.
Helene shrugged. “In retrospect, I guess.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know about the collection,” Blaze reminded her.
Helene laughed, her heels clicking against the marble floor as she crossed the room to stand next to him. “No; I said Nicholas keeps me out of his dealings where the collection is concerned,” she clarified. “I know a great deal about all the pieces, Liam,” she said. “I helped find them, clean them.” Her volume lowered. “Mount them.”
Helene’s continued advances only reinforced Blaze’s suspicion that she wanted something personal out of this process—not just to be present as the appraisal took place as she’d asserted earlier, and not simply to be made aware of the intentions of strangers when it came to her beloved island home. She wanted something specific, something beneficial. Some reason for having time alone with Liam Keller.
Blaze felt his senses heighten.
“So you put together
more than just parties, then?” he asked.
“I put together everything in this place,” she replied, “including all the intergalactic bells and whistles my husband showed you yesterday.”
“You did all of it?”
Helene nodded. “I’m the creator goddess of all you see on Thane, no matter what Nicholas might say otherwise.”
“It’s truly impressive.”
Helene gazed at the blade. “I know.”
“The party was exquisite, and the treasure room will be a peak experience for your guests.” He looked sideways at her, a bit playfully, hoping to coax her true expectation out by falling into her seductive web, if only a little. “I can only imagine what the rest of the gala has in store.”
“Well, you’ve seen the multi-media display,” she told him, a vibration of true excitement rising in her voice. “The dinner carries forward the theme of those divine theatrics. The musical entertainment is a live performance by the tribal orchestra on the recordings. And there’s a performance piece that will put last night’s fire dancers to shame.”
Blaze turned his glance fully in her direction to find her eyes shining, her lips gleaming. “And the food is something special, I would guess.”
“Sumptuous, Liam. Utterly sumptuous.” Helene’s words were practically a moan, and Blaze felt something highly unprofessional stirring in him now. “The menu consists of traditional Meso-American dishes prepared as haute cuisine.” She breathed slowly, purposefully. “Intended to be...orgasmic.”
Blaze was suddenly a bit less certain of her motives. Maybe all of her talk about strangers and their intentions had nothing to do with relics or art or galas. Maybe her suspicion over Liam Keller’s business acumen and her insistence on being present wasn’t a symptom of her anger at her husband for leaving her out of his professional dealings, or of her interest in knowing how the assessment would be performed. Maybe all of this was a symptom of her marital dissatisfaction with him, and her inquisition a test of a more delicate nature.
He wasn’t certain which path to take now, whether he should let her continue leading him into this seduction so he could find out what she was truly after, or to return things to a more business-like tone, to insist on continuing with the assessment until he reached the veiled case that held the Tlaloc mask so he could complete his mission. He reasoned it would now be thoroughly impossible to make the switch with two sets of eyes burning into him as he worked. He would be able to size up the situation at least, and mentally plan for a future moment when the switch could be made. It would have to be enough.