by Andy Andrews
It was a painting of a male face from the shoulders up. The only word to describe the man was “terrifying.” His black hair was wild with colored streaks of white and red. The skin on one side of his face was painted blue, the other bright yellow. He was screaming furiously as if he might lunge from the canvas. But the most incredible sight was the relic, front and center in the image, tied directly to the man’s forehead. “Geez! Who is that?” Dorry asked.“I’ll have nightmares!” “Date: 1304?” Dylan prompted.
Mark and Dorry shook their heads.
“‘William Wallace,’” Abby read. “‘Hero of Scotland. During a time in world history when the average male height was just over five feet,William Wallace stood six feet seven inches tall and possessed a physique to match. His sword’—which by the way, is on display today . . . where is that?” She turned the pages.“I have it on another sheet . . . okay, here. ‘The sword, sixty-six inches in length and weighing almost nine pounds, can be seen at the Patrons of Cowanes Hospital in Scotland.
“‘Wallace was obsessed by the idea of freedom for his people and’—get this—,”Abby interjected. She began to read slowly.“‘He often wore his “stone of destiny” into battle! He was captured and executed in 1305, an event regarded by many to have created an even greater clamor for freedom by the people of Scotland.’”Abby closed her notebook.
Dorry checked what she had written. “Wallace was 1305. Joan of Arc . . . 1431. The first date we have on an Adams is 1638 when the object came to America.” She paused, lost in thought. Suddenly, Dorry asked,“We do all agree, don’t we, that this lineup—Wallace, Joan of Arc, Adams—this is all the same object, right? Free?”
“Yes,” they concurred.
“Heck of a lineup,” Dorry murmured and looked again to her notes.“Abby,” Dylan said. “What about the radio scope?”
“Oh!” Abby shook her head as if waking up. “I almost forgot.” Opening her notebook again, Abby glanced at it, then began. “You know the scope works by light refraction. I can see inside—shapes, stresses. Long story short, the pieces were hollow in their original form, and the pressure closures on the ends were immediate. A catastrophic event. “I want to run the scope on the Adams piece coming in tomorrow, because the picture of it, well, the shape is somewhat different.”
“You said a catastrophic event,”Mark pointed out.“Any idea what the catalyst might have been?”
Abby frowned.“What do you mean?”
“In my line of work,”Mark explained,“the catalyst of a catastrophic event would be a gun, a knife, a bomb, a car bumper . . .”
“Okay, I gotcha. Well, rule out gun, bomb, and car bumper.” Mark smiled at Abby’s remark. She continued. “But I guess ‘knife’ is a possibility. It would have been a big knife . . . weight behind it, like a sword or an ax.
“Here’s something peculiar. You can’t see this with the naked eye, but with scope magnification and resolution, there appears to be edge-to-edge closure, caused by the catastrophic event, on both sides of the Live object. It’s as if a Ziploc bag had a Ziploc on each end of the bag . . . are you following me? Two edges?” Everyone nodded, concentrating deeply on Abby’s words.
“The food stone, however, has edge-to-edge closure on only one side. On the side opposite the pressure closure on the food stone, it is obvious that the original casting created its own hollow curve. On that end, there exists a rough spot about the size of a dime. In my opinion, something was attached, at some point, to that location on the food stone.” Changing the subject, Abby asked Dorry, “Are you getting anything from your sources?”
Dorry shook her head disgustedly.“Zip. Nada.”
“Me neither,” Mark said.“A lot of people had their hands on these things, but it looks like nobody ever stole one!” They all chuckled.
“Okay, here’s what I’m doing next,”Abby said.“The Adams piece comes in tomorrow. I’ll scope it here, but here’s some big news, I think. I checked around. I have a buddy I graduated with—undergrad—and after doing all his doctoral work, he went the extreme research route. That means University of Wisconsin–Madison. They are the big leagues.
“Among other things, they do chemical analysis of archaeological materials. They are among the only locations in the world with the instruments to tell us more. If everyone agrees, I have already given Perry a heads up and we can ship the three objects to him tomorrow afternoon. He has reserved time with a machine called an Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometer.”
Mark’s eyes widened.“O-kaaaay . . .”
Abby laughed.“It’s a mouthful. But Perry will be able to send me the results I want on computer models by e-mail. I want him to do two specific things. I want to examine those edges more closely than I can here and . . . I want to regressively age the edges.”
Dorry looked at Mark.“That’s what you do, right? With pictures of kids?”
He nodded. In work with missing persons, it was a common tactic to regress the picture of an adult in order to see if he or she is, in fact, the child that was lost years earlier.
“So, I want a regression of all three objects. I want a better idea of what these edges used to look like.”
For a moment everyone was still. Then Dylan said,“Tell ’em why,Ab.”
She hesitated, then lifted her chin. “I think they used to fit together,” she said. “I think they are all pieces of something else.”
Dorry leaned forward and put her face down on the table, cradled by her arms. Then, just as quickly, looked up. “I believe it,” she stated, acceptance on her face.“I’m kinda blown away by the idea, but I think that has been bothering me too. It’s all just . . . just too connected . . . for this not to have been, well . . . connected.” She exhaled loudly and slumped back into her chair.
“Okay, then . . .” Mark spoke slowly. He was doodling with his pen on the piece of paper in front of him.“I have a question for you. If these pieces all fit . . .” He put down the pen and looked up.“Do we have all the pieces? Or are there more?”
THIRTEEN
NEW YORK CITY—MAY 1, 1915
AT TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, THE TEMPERA-ture was still unseasonably cool. The low clouds and drizzling mist seemed more suited for December or January than the first day of May. Nigel Bailey waited patiently under the canopy of Baron’s Pub on Sixth Avenue, smoking a cigarette. He had called in quite a few markers from friends—and friends of friends—to make this day happen. If the meeting went well, he would be a rich man.
Bailey was of average height and compact build with broad shoulders that hinted of an uncommon strength. His complexion was dark, as were his eyes, and he sported a bushy mustache that was longer than the hair on his head, which was concealed, in any case, by a tall, beaver-skin hat. Noticing his cigarette had burned almost to his fingertips, Nigel quickly rolled another one and lit it from the last flicker of the first. He was thirty-four years old and a world traveler, though this was his first trip to America. Having grown up in Australia, and on his own from the time he was fourteen, he had made his way as a stock herder in the outback until leaving the country for good at twenty-three. For a number of years, Nigel worked as a deckhand, mate, and finally purser on cargo and passenger vessels trading from Africa to European ports. It was on such a trip two years earlier that Nigel had first heard of the incredible discoveries being made in Egypt. The Valley of the Kings, as it was being called, was yielding its priceless treasures to one fool or another on almost a monthly basis. In Italy, the same thing was happening. Roman vaults and catacombs of long-buried dead were beginning to be found.
In the seaport of Venice,Nigel spent a month’s wages in one evening, satisfying the thirst of a passenger who claimed to know the location of one such place. Prodigious amounts of the most expensive liquor finally managed to pry the secret from the man. The very next day Nigel left the employ of his captain.
The location turned out to be bogus—the drunken boasting of a determined storyteller. The search to
that place, however, pointed to stepping-stones of more and better information, leading Nigel on an extended journey of months and miles, which finally, and quite by chance, bore fruit.
Nigel had worked throughout Spain and Italy, mostly as a woodcutter, earning enough money to pay his modest living expenses. One day, searching for hardwood on the estate of a wine producer, he happened upon a series of mounds. Having read newspaper descriptions of burial sites that had been located and unearthed, Nigel knew that, often, the only evidence of a tomb’s existence was a small hill which sprang from otherwise level ground. Despite the realization that he was on private property, he ignored the possibility of imprisonment—Italy had already enacted strong legislation regarding the opening of ancient graves without government supervision—set aside his ax, and picked up a shovel.
There were five mounds, and it had taken him a full day to penetrate the first two. What he found in each was a single skeleton, fully formed, and fitted with a breastplate. A spearhead made of some kind of metal lay near both skeletons’ heads. Nigel assumed the spear’s shafts would have been wooden, thus decaying long ago. Both burial sites were empty except for the warriors who were laid directly onto the stone floor.
Studying the layout of the mounds, Nigel saw that he had opened two of the four graves that surrounded the one in the center. Mentally connecting the soldiers with the arrangement of the five mounds, and wondering what, if anything, they were guarding, Nigel dug into the side of the center mound and was rewarded for his effort.
When he had entered the tomb of Constantine XI, he did so on his knees. The single candle Nigel held flickered as the stale air brushed his face. At first, he had been disappointed. Parchment scrolls that turned to dust when he picked them up, several cracked vases, and some wooden carvings were all he noticed at first glance. No stacks of gold or silver. No diamonds or jewels.
The bones of the emperor were laid on a stone slab at the back of the tomb. The flesh had long since disappeared. The thumb of the emperor’s right hand yielded a ring of gold, decorated with a green stone of some sort. On his left hand, which had separated into a pile of tiny bones as it was moved, there were three more rings of similar design. Nigel almost missed the medallion, dull and sifted with powdered human tissue, that was lying inside the chest cavity. He reached through the rib bones to draw out the disk. It had evidently been worn on the great man’s chest and, over the years, gradually fallen through the decaying body.
As he pulled it into the candlelight, Nigel had seen a hole that had been drilled into one side with a leather strap run through it. At least he thought it was leather. Whatever it had been was now reduced to dark, disintegrated pieces that had wound up and over the ribs, across the collarbone, around the base of the skull, and back down the other side. Nigel brushed the remnants of the strap from the medallion and blew a final piece from the hole. Tucking it into his pocket with the rings, he opened a cloth sack, which he proceeded to fill with every other loose item in the tomb. Nigel looked at his pocket watch as he threw his cigarette into the street. Now to sell the lot, he thought, as he spotted a black coach easing to a stop in front of the pub. Pulled by four matching horses, also black, the coach was magnificent, trimmed in gold with red leather accent. The driver opened the side door and offered a hand to the man Nigel had come to America to see.
Alfred Vanderbilt stepped out of the coach and straightened. Tall and elegant, he wore a pink carnation in the buttonhole of his knee-length, charcoal-gray, pinstriped jacket. Matching trousers, black lambskin gloves, and a silk-banded top hat completed the fashionable ensemble. Vanderbilt stepped aside as his personal valet, Ronald Denyer, followed him from the coach. Finally, two other men, one after the other, emerged in the coach’s doorway and stepped to the street.
Nigel watched from the pub’s entrance as one of the world’s wealthiest men approached.
He had done his research well and knew Vanderbilt to be a student of art and antiquities, a hobby on which he spent money lavishly. And he had the money to spend. Only thirty-eight years old, Alfred had already inherited the bulk of the Vanderbilt estate. Upon their father’s death, each of his brothers and sisters—some younger, some older—had been willed seven million dollars. Alfred received seventy-six million.
While Vanderbilt was immediately recognized everywhere he went, he was also well respected. He was known to be a kind man and was not considered one of the robber barons—men who used their wealth as a weapon and, with it, bludgeoned the poor. It was common knowledge that, as a young man, Alfred alone among his siblings had insisted on beginning his business experience by “starting at the bottom” as a clerk in one of his father’s offices. The public never forgot it. Neither did his father, as was evidenced by the division of his wealth.
“Mr.Vanderbilt!” Nigel called as he stepped to the curb with his hand outstretched. “Nigel Bailey, sir.”
Vanderbilt expertly shucked his gloves and shook the man’s hand.“Pleased to make your acquaintance,Mr. Bailey,” he said. “Please meet my valet. This is Mr. Denyer.” Nigel shook the hand of the shorter man, who was dressed well, though not so handsomely as his employer.
Then Vanderbilt introduced the other two men who were standing to the side in simple, dark suits.“These gentlemen are Drs. Osborn and Tate.Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Director, and Dr. Lawrence Hardy Tate, Curator, of the American Museum of Natural History on Seventy-seventh Street.”Nigel shook hands with both.“Shall we?”Vanderbilt asked, indicating the pub’s entrance with a sweep of his arm as his valet hurried to open the door.
As Nigel followed the group into the restaurant, his mind raced. He hadn’t counted on the presence of experts. Especially ones who might question his methods, which Nigel admitted were amateurish at best. No worries, he thought, I’ll bluster my way through.
Inside, the waiters scurried to seat the Vanderbilt party at a round table beside the front window. Alfred and Nigel sat down and shifted their chairs a bit toward each other while the valet and Drs. Osborn and Tate discreetly took positions to the side. Not close enough to the lunch hour, Vanderbilt ordered only hot beverages for the table, which were delivered at once. Alone for the time being,Vanderbilt addressed his guest.“Mr. Bailey! My attorney tells me you are a recent arrival on our shores.”
“Yes, sir. Only two weeks ago. Tramp steamer from Genoa.” Nigel noticed that the valet, Ronald Denyer, was standing, circling the table and pouring the tea and coffee. Cripes, he thought, this is a different life. This man has his own personal waiter!
“The accent . . . Australian, am I correct?” Vanderbilt inquired.
“Yeah, right,” Nigel grinned.“Down under. Ever been?” “Several times, actually,” Vanderbilt responded. “Lovely people with a spirit much the same as our own.” He cleared his throat. “It is not my intention to rush you, Mr. Bailey. I am interested in your presentation. My attorney has filled me in on your efforts in a general way. I am, however, on a rather tight schedule. I’m booked for passage to Europe this afternoon. In fact, we leave for the port from here.”
“No worries. Where would you like me to begin?”
“How about with the location of the tomb,”Vanderbilt said congenially.“Where is it exactly?”
“Exactly, eh?” Nigel said innocently. “Yeah. I was prepared to give you the tomb’s general location—that being the continent of Europe—but you want me to tell you the tomb’s exact location. All right . . . the tomb’s exact location is Italy.”
Vanderbilt laughed and winked at his valet.“Point taken, Mr. Bailey. Do answer this question though: How do you know that the tomb you raided—”
“Explored would be a much nicer choice of words, Mr. Vanderbilt,” Nigel interrupted with a thoughtful expression on his face.“Raided is one of those terms that gets me in trouble with the law”—he shot a knowing look at Osborn—“and the items removed from your museum.”
“Let me phrase it your way, then,” Vanderbilt began again. “How do you know that the
tomb you ‘explored’ was that of . . . Constantine, I believe I was told?”
“Because the bones were lying on a slab that was engraved with his bloody name on it! I’ll admit, I’m not the brightest lad you’ll meet, but cripes, give me a fair crack of the whip! I’ve been readin’ for a while now and there’s no gettin’ around the big C-O-N and all those other letters followed by an XI.”
Vanderbilt laughed at the man’s sarcastic wit, but looked to Tate for confirmation of Nigel’s assertion. Understanding the question in his patron’s eyes, the museum curator responded with validation.“All the Roman Caesars—at least those whose tombs we have found—were laid on slabs of marble. Their names were always cut into the stone. I’m curious, Mr. Bailey, was the marble of the rare, dark variety? And the slab like a large gravestone?”
Nigel’s eyes narrowed and he replied instantly. “I am aware that I don’t possess your sophistication, that to you I am just some galah in kangaroo hide jumping around the big city, but I don’t appreciate being suspected of fraud.” Tate tried to interrupt but was stopped as Nigel held up a hand. Softening, he said,“But seeing as how you have a job to do”—Nigel looked at Vanderbilt—“and a fine one he is doing . . .” Back to Tate, he continued. “I’ll give you the answers you need for verification. However,” he warned with a pointed finger,“no more mucking about with your sneaky questions. I won’t take kindly to it. I’m not in the mood.”
Vanderbilt watched the exchange with interest. Tate had paled at the Australian’s aggressive posture. It was he who had earlier suggested a series of traps to ensure the validity of the material being offered for sale. Hoaxes were common, and he had already saved the museum from embarrassment on several occasions. Osborn, for his part, maintained his composure and managed a stiff smile as he grudgingly nodded.
Taking a deep breath, Nigel grinned and said,“Right. All friends again? Here we go. No, the marble wasn’t of the ‘rare, dark variety.’ It was pure white, as you well know. And the great man wasn’t lying on a slab like a gravestone. He was lying on a slab like somebody’s house! It was mammoth. I’d loved to have brought it along, but I didn’t have a herd of elephants with me at that moment to yank it out of the ground. Criminy! Are they all that big?”